In defining the relationship between feminism and avantgarde views of contemporary art, it is important to examine what tasks feminist art histories’ revision of art history might seek to achieve.
Is it the recovery of devalued, neglected or forgotten woman artists?
Is it to highlight to role of women artists as avantgarde artists?
Is it to turn “minor” artists into “major” artists through a re-evaluation of their work?
Is it to “add” women artists as artists to existing accounts of art history?
Is it to change the value system and ways in which male and/or female artists are written about?
Is it to draw a distinction between masculinity and femininity and re-evaluate the devalued forms of femininity or whole areas of women’s art practices found in existing accounts of art history?
Is it to re-value female/feminine qualities in the work of women artists?
Or to change how male/masculine and female/feminine traits are considered, in the light of feminism’s critique of the relationship between sex/gender?
Is it to critique how femininity is presented and understood in relation to the work of women artists and thus re-evaluate their contribution to art?
There are many more questions to ask about definitions of genius, exceptionalism, eccentricity and tokenism.
What are we doing when we celebrate an artist’s uniqueness?
The value that is created by the idea of “uniqueness” / “singularity” raises a lot of questions about the values we hold about certain kinds of subjectivity and how our tastes and prejudices will affect our ability to evaluate or judge someone else’s skill, artistry and creativity?
There are also many more questions to raise about gender in relation to genre – or types of artworks and artworks made in specific media.
If you are not familiar with any arguments about art history, or feminist art histories, other than as stories of great artists, you may find useful as a starting point: n.paradoxa’s Guide to Feminist Art, Art History and Criticism
In the boxes below, some key tropes in feminist art theory/history regarding femininity as a stereotype, as a female/feminine sensibility, as valued for “the feminine”, or understanding “femininities vs. masculinities” in art history and as feminine/Feminist aesthetics are briefly considered.
Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock in Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology define the feminine stereotype as both patriarchal and negative because it is:
‘a “catch-all” for a wide range of ideas, and it has a long history. As Mary Ellmann showed in her study of phallic criticism and sexual analogy in literary criticism, Thinking About Women (1968), the stereotype is a product of a patriarchal culture which constructs male dominance through the significance it attaches to sexual difference. Women and all their activities are characterized as the antithesis of cultural creativity, making the notion of a woman artist, a contradiction in terms.’
The feminine stereotype reinforces the separation of “women’s art” as a category/type of art from “Art” with a capital “A”. Parker and Pollock argue this feminine stereotype emerged in the 19th Century and has been reinforced in the 20th Century. Women artists’ works are read through the feminine stereotype and this trope is central to how their work is devalued and marginalised in criticism.
‘None the less, writers have been forced to confront the fact that women have consistently painted and sculpted, but their use of a feminine stereotype for all that women have done serves to separate women’s art from Art (male) and to accommodate the internal contradiction between the reality of women’s activities and the myths of male cultural creativity.’
(Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology p.8-9)
This division between “Art” and “women’s art” as a separate category has had many negative implications for how women artists’ work has been seen. Through this construction, women’s art has been associated with the celebration of a feminine sensibility i.e. qualities and attributes visible in an artwork which are associated with stereotypically feminine characteristics. These attributes are regarded as separate from Art which is male-defined and modelled on male cultural activities. This categorisation of women’s art as separate and other, and culturally devalued, is a reinforcement of the status quo and discrimination against women.
Feminist critique begins by recognising the functioning of a feminine stereotype at work. Identifying that a feminine stereotype exists is not an argument in favour of the “feminine”, it is about recognising that stereotypes have negative effects which discriminate against any value being placed on women’s cultural production. It is about maintaining a separate category for women artists which contains values and ideas which are judged as different from Art with a capital “A” where male artists form the key examples.
Griselda Pollock also demonstrated in her writing how “Art” with a capital A as male was defined against the notion of work in 19th Century bourgeois society, and as a “professional” activity separate from manual labour. Women’s work, by contrast, was defined in relation to the home, to drudgery and repetition and women’s contribution to art, associated with amateurism. These stereotypes persist into the 20th Century. (see Chapter 2 G. Pollock Vision and Difference (Routledge/Methuen, 1988)
The feminine stereotype can be seen most clearly in reviews which make obvious comparisons between the work of men and that of women: male artists’ work might be valued for its boldness, originality, daring and innovation while women artists’ work would be described as limited, derivative, timid or conservative.
Attempts were made in the early women’s art movement to define whether or not there were specific qualities in the work produced by women which distinguished them from men. This involved questioning the validity of claims made about feminine stereotypes.
A female sensibility was distinguished from cultural stereotypes of femininity in so far as it was recognised as not being ‘stereotypically feminine’ but as advancing a women’s point of view or experience. Exaggerated use of feminine qualities to the point of irony (over-pretty aesthetics, excessively pink works) were used to counter the feminine stereotype as much as work which involved role reversal or unusual uses of materials – against their gendered associations.
Whether or not women artists should develop a female (not a feminine!) sensibility was one response to the question, ‘What is feminist art?’
In 1976 Ruth Iskin, director of the Woman’s Building Galleries in Los Angeles, along with art historians Lucy R. Lippard and Arlene Raven, asked artists who consider themselves feminists via mailed invitations to respond to the question, ‘What is feminist art?’ Joan Snyder wrote an impassioned response to the question as a defence of women’s role as cultural producers.
Joan Snyder (b. 1940) sent this list of words defining “female sensibility”:
Response to What is Feminist Art? (1976)
Responding to this debate in 1977, Women Artist’s News reported the following comment:
Lucy Sallick ‘[If] a inherent female sensibility exists in women’s art, how is it to be differentiated from “feminist art”, which has been consciously produced as a result of the feminist movement? The phrase “female sensibility” is fraught with subtle and complex allusions to politics and feminism, and the very meaning of the term is subjective and unclear… Do we want female sensibility to become a catch-all category for a school of art defined and made by “true” feminists? What happens to the women whose politics are not so apparent in their work, or whose sources are completely different? It used to be “paint like a man”. Will it now be “paint like a woman”?
If a woman’s art is not clearly feminist and does not happen to have characteristics attributable to female sensibility, is her consciousness not sufficiently raised? Is she operating under male-dominated ideas? These questions create an atmosphere of unease and resentment among women, have the ring of “I’m a better feminist than you” or “My art is better than your art”.
Women Artists News (Sept 1977) vol 3 no. 4 quoted in Judy Siegel in Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk that Changed Art, 1975-1990 (an anthology of Women Artists’ News) (Midmarsh Arts press, 1990) pp.72-73
Interestingly this echoes Pat Mainardi’s criticism of the market-based opportunism in any attempts to identify a feminine sensibility made in ‘A Feminine Sensibility’ in Feminist Art Journal issue 1, vol 1 (1972): she wrote,
“Am I surprised that the right wing of the women’s artist’s movement is codifying a so-called female aesthetic which interprets art by women as having validity (being “truly female”) only insofar as it can be analyzed in terms of female anatomy? No.
Am I surprised that most of it just so happens to look like minimal art, the style fashionable when the theorizing began? No….
“Feminist art is different from feminine sensibility. Feminist Art is political propaganda 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.”
In 1982, ten years later, Griselda Pollock organised an exhibition called Sense and Sensibility (Midland’s Art Group, 1982) to draw attention to the gap between feminine and feminist in feminist art practices. The title of the exhibition was also a reference to Jane Austen’s 1811 novel.
This re-evaluation of a female sensibility is always positioned in contrast to culturally specific stereotypes produced by distinctions between masculine/feminine sensibilities within a culture at large which remains patriarchal. It is a way of problematising the “feminine” and contrasting this with a woman’s voice/subjectivity/position as a moment of difference. The idea of a female sensibility is not “essentialist” because it is not putting forward or even suggesting an “essence” which all women possess. Most of the works about female sensibility (for example, Lynda Benglis’ 1974 film of the same name) question the idea of any fixed form of female sensibility exists.
The idea of a female aesthetic was advocated by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in 1973-1976. This topic was debated extensively during this 3 year period – the debate changed after 1976, but the ideas generated are frequently referred to as if this female aesthetic was still the only definition of feminist art.
[If you search online for this term, you will generally be offered numerous pages about cosmetic surgery !! – try adding either of these women’s names to the search for a more precise result]
The idea of a female aesthetic was a means to advocate that there were specific qualities that women brought to art-making. However, the argument was confined to specific attributes – Judy Chicago’s defense of core imagery was one of them.
‘To be a woman is to be an object of contempt, and the vagina, stamp of femaleness, is devalued. The woman artist, seeing herself as loathed, takes that very mark of her otherness and by asserting it as the hallmark of her iconography, establishes a vehicle by which to state the truth and beauty of her identity.’
Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro ‘Female Imagery’ Womanspace Journal (1973), 14. (written, March 1972.)
This was criticised for its “essentialism”, i.e. the naming of one quality as an essence for all women, when it was actually a culturally specific and historically specific configuration for an approach in contemporary art at the time.
See also Judy Chicago’s one-page essay ‘What is feminist art?’
Lucy Lippard also attempted to name different qualities as a female aesthetic. She wrote a very long list of the traits that she saw women artists producing – this was based on her experience as an art critic looking at work in this period.
Here, in any case, for your own consideration, are some of these elements that recur: a uniform density, or overall texture, often sensuously tactile and repetitive or detailed to the point of obsession; the preponderance of circular forms, central focus, inner space (sometimes contradicting the first aspect); a ubiquitous linear “bag” or parabolic form that turns in on itself; layers, strata, or veils; an indefineable looseness or flexibility of handling; windows; autobiographical content; animals; flowers; a certain kind of fragmentation; a new fondness for pinks and pastels and ephemeral cloud colors that used to be tabu unless a woman wanted to be accused of making “feminine” art.
Lucy Lippard From the Centre: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art (1976) p.49
Lucy Lippard moved away from these definitions and did not regard them as a recipe for making feminist art, only as a partial observation made in the context of looking at art at a particular moment. They were descriptive, not proscriptive notions.
Feminist aesthetics has multiple meanings. Feminist aesthetics has been used to define methods of reading and interpreting contemporary art with a feminist lens or perspective.
While some people use it to define qualities identified as feminist within the approach, politics or content in women’s art practices (as a set of strategies deployed), other people use it to define feminist interventions in the field of aesthetics (a branch of philosophy) and expand this loosely into all feminist interventions within philosophy.
In debates about aesthetics and politics, feminist aesthetics is occasionally used as a synonym for feminist politics in art.
A brief introduction to the debates can be seen in Katy Deepwell video seminar on Feminist Aesthetics at the ICA in 2011. (This link takes you to a 90 min. video).
The literature on Feminist Aesthetics is extensive in terms of articles:
Key books include:
Christine Battersby Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics. (Indiana University Press, 1989).
Hilde Hein & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.) Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. (Indiana University Press, 1993).
Gisela Ecker (ed) Feminist Aesthetics (Women’s press/ Beacon Press, 1986)
Peggy Z. Brand & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.) Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism. (Columbia University Press, 2012).
Rita Felski Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (harvard University Press, 1989)
L. Ryan Musgrave (ed.) Feminist Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (Springer, 2017).
Susan Elizabeth Crowell ‘Reflections on a Feminist Aesthetic’ Studio Potter, Volume 20, Number 1 (December 1991) http://www.studiopotter.org/articles/art0004.htm
The idea of aesthetics being practiced in relation to ‘the feminine’ takes the idea of aesthetics as the interpretation of art and asks questions about how we interpret and understand art differently because of gender.
Aesthetics in the feminine can be seen as a counter-move to male-centric forms of philosophy where questions of gender are not discussed or continually ignored. It can prioritise the woman reader and the sensibility of the artist/author.
The feminine is used in French Feminist thought and Italian feminism to mark a difference in language and sensibility in both interpretation and production by women artists and women writers.
Naomi Schor wrote a book on this subject in literary criticism.
The concept of ecriture feminine embodies feminine aesthetics as an alternative to male-centric art production.
While Anglo-Saxon (Australian, Canadian, US, South African, US and UK feminisms, and German-speaking countries) often make a strong distinction between feminine and feminist – there has been a re-valuation of the feminine as a mode of resistance pitched against the Universal or dominant symbolic order, as a result of Italian and French feminist thought.
In the analysis of feminine aesthetics, the feminine is often re-valued for its ‘Otherness’ – its transgression of the law of the Father and its ability to speak differently from logocentric thought – especially in histories of 20th and 21st century art practices.
The actual creative project of woman as a subject involves BETRAYING the expressive mechanisms of culture in order to express herself through the break, within the gaps between the systematic spaces of artistic language. This is not a matter of accusation or vindication, but of TRANSGRESSION (closer to madness than to reason)….This kind of project offers the only means of objectivizing feminine existence: not a positive avant-garde subversion but a process of differentiation. Not the project of fixing meanings but of breaking them up and multiplying them.
Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti ‘ Negative Capability as Practice in Women’s Art’ (1979) from Studio International, 191 (979) (1976) pp.24-27.
These ideas were also developed by Julia Kristeva in her analyses of the languages of the avantgarde as a transgression of the symbolic order and a return to jouissance.
These ideas of an alternative feminine were implicit in the title of the exhibition Inside the Visible: Elliptical Traverse of Twentieth Century Art in, of and from the Feminine, curated by Catherine de Zegher (ICA: Boston, 1996)
Katy Deepwell’s interview with Catherine de Zegher about this exhibition is available in n.paradoxa online, issue 1, 1996
As Nelly Richard suggests – to avoid recreating the feminine stereotype:
Such a perspective would open with questions about the relationship between feminine authorship (being a woman) and feminism (signifying organization and cultural intervention) in the sense of asking what the mechanisms of critical dismantling might be which allow one to subject the masculine orders of social registers for manufacturing meaning. In the absence of such a perspective, the opportunity dissipates for the woman question to detonate a polemical reflection in art – for example, the modes in which a “feminine aesthetic” and a “feminist aesthetic” respond contradictorily to the relationship between gender-sexual determinants and the notions of “femininity” that the work seeks to construct or deconstruct.
Nelly Richard ‘Politics and Aesthetics of the Sign’ (2004) from Masculine/Feminine: Practices of Difference(s) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004)
As the examples above show, it is not just a distinction between feminine and feminist that feminisms have sought to identify through stereotypes, sensibilities and aesthetics in their relationship to politics. Women artists are often compared to their male peers. Defining what “femininity” is in their work is often dependent on how “masculinity” is defined in any peer group or any historical moment. This is not just a binary question of male/female; masculine/feminine comparison.
Comparative analyses of male and female artists often rest on an examination of the traits or characteristics of masculinity and femininity evident in the work of male/female artists. These comparative analyses have been most successful and convincing (in exhibitions and publications) when women artists’ work is analysed in relation to the men who they worked with (their peer group) or in a particular art movement to which they belonged: e.g. women artists in Surrealism.
However, these gender-based comparative historical analyses often reinforce the feminine stereotype in Art by repeating the ideas expressed in contemporary criticism that because a woman artist made the work, only traits of femininity can be detected in her work and when a male artist makes a work, only Art can be found there.
Often the relationships that the woman artist had with their male peers in life, as lovers, partners, wives/husbands, students, friends are emphasised in these comparisons. As a result, the position of the male artist as the “norm” / “Universal” and the female artist as “Other” / “particular or local” is reinforced, rather than subverted or challenged in how women artists’ work is discussed and women are “assumed” to occupy a “following” position in relation to male “invention”.
These comparative analyses have nevertheless contributed significantly to a re-evaluation of women’s contribution to particular modernist movements in the 20th Century because women artists’ works have been given serious attention amongst their peers.
Comparison of femininity/masculinity in visual art has also been linked to questions about the representation of different spaces/places by male/female artists or about particular genders producing more work in particular genres; how theories of representation can identify preferred subjects, colours, materials/media or viewpoints and how gender is a point of analysis in this.
The philosopher Val Plumwood pointed out that four possibilities exist simultaneously when one tries to identify the positions from which we construct positive and negative views of masculinity and femininity, depending on what we “accept” or “reject” about them.
- Accept: Masculinity Reject: Femininity
- Accept: Masculinity Accept: Femininity
- Accept: Femininity Reject: Masculinity
- Reject: Masculinity Reject: Femininity
She characterises these approaches in the following way: 1) is the traditional model (a maintenance of the current status quo and patriarchal order); 2) represents patriarchy’s romantic ideal of complementarity or “separate spheres” in which the two sexes co-exist as separate groups, in different complementary roles. 3) represents a re-evaluation of femininity where it is valued above the values of masculinity. In her analysis, 3) represents a range of arguments extolling femininity as a virtue or where women’s inherent capacity for motherhood/peace is celebrated in contrast to men’s pursuit of violence and war. 4) represents a rejection of any polarity between male/female and could be an argument for androgyny or gender-blending. However, she argues, feminism has not argued that the concept of the human should be remade “in the mould of either the masculine or the feminine”. What is needed is a broader discussion about sex/gender and the constructions of humanity in relation to nature. One that does not depend on an over-valuation of any gendered trait and an overcoming of the many dichotomies which structure how we think: mind/body; rationality/emotionality; public/private.
Val Plumwood’s essay ‘Women, Humanity and Nature’ was published in Radical Philosophy 48, Spring 1988 and is reproduced in her collected writings.
Do you recognise these ideas at work in the art history that you have read?
Can you make distinctions between ideas about the feminine/ female / feminist?
Do you see that sometimes discussions of the feminine are stereotyped? or stereotypical? How would you define this?
Can you identify how an art historian or an art critic will use words differently when referring to a male or female artist? How does gender operate in this praise or condemnation of work produced by either sex?
