Art of ‘the Others’

First the women /feminist art

The Dinner Party, 1974-1979
Judy Chicago – was an icon, she presented this room size installation that features the triangle table. It suggests that
history should be read countered to traditionally male dominated histories. It also can be understood as a
reinterpretation of the last supper.

• Feminist and African American artists, among others, redirected the course of twentieth-century American art
along more expansive and pluralistic pathways
• Guided by the activism of Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation, and by ‘consiousness-raising’ techniques aimed
at political and social awareness and self-knowledge
• Challenged the mainstream art world’s longstanding exclusion of women and non-white artists

• The 1970s marked the end of post-war America’s global economic dominance
• Profound political disillusionment (Watergate, Vietnam War)
• The decade also generated a dynamic cultural revolution predicated on egalitarian aspirations and alternatives

• Women’s Liberation movement sparked the culture of Feminist art activism

• Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963)
• Formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW), 1966
• Title IX – requiring federally funded educational institutions to fund sports programmes for women at levels
comparable with men, 1972
• Roe v. Wade – legalized abortion – 1973
• Feminist art – a project transforming cultural attitudes about women

• Women artists organized Feminist art galleries and collectives – New York’s AIR (Artists in Residence) Gallery, Los
Angeles’s Womanspace, Chicago’s Artemisia, Minneapolis’s WARM (Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota)
• Feminist art programmes developed and the California Institute of the Arts was established – by 1974, over
1,000 US colleges and universities offered women’s studies courses
• New journals were published- The Feminist Art Journal, womanart, Chrysalis, Heresies – reframing the discourse
of modern and contemporary art

Through the Object’s Eye, 1970 challenge to conventional representation of the females – the role has reversed – who is
the object and subject?
Joan Semmel

S.O.S. Starification Object Series, 1974-1982 – the bodies are covered with chewing gum. This criticizes the female
stereotypes.
Hannah Wilke
Mary Cassatt and Me, 1976 – in this image she uses handicraft to raise consciousness about restrictive notions of female
identity
Miriam Schapiro
Miriam Schapiro: “I wanted to validate the traditional activities of women, to connect myself to the
unknown women artists … who had done the invisible women’s work of civilization. I wanted to
acknowledge them, to honor them”

Record for Hattie, 1974

Betye Saar – experiented with materials that have feminine connotations

Susan Frazier, Vicki Hodgetts, Robin Weltsch – kitchen is decorated with women’s breast
Womanhouse, 1972

First Silueta, 1973

Ana Mendieta – she celebrated the female body as the source of life

Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1978

Yolanda Lopez – celebrated the spiritual power and feminist inspiration
The Flag is bleeding, 1967 – this image symbolizes the abuse of civil liberties of all those who were unacknowledged and
unprivileged
Faith Ringgold

Black Art Movement

• Black American artists rejected their longstanding cultural invisibility
• Abandoned the identification ‘Negro’ for ‘black’ – ‘Say it Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud’
• Black artists organized protests against mainstream museums which persisted in ignoring black art – formed
their own collectives, museums and independently organized shows
• Still – limited notions of black artistic identity fixed solely on racial identity

Injustice Case, 1970

David Hammons

George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from American history, 1975
Robert Colescott

Afro-Phoenix No.1, 1963 – uses steel, scissors, chains as a metaphor for slavery
Melvin Edwards

• In 1967, The Studio Museum in Harlem was founded, becoming a national showcase for black artists.
• Over the next decade, more museums began collecting and exhibiting African American art, including
Contemporary Black Artists (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1968) and Black:USA, 1973 (New York Cultural
Center). In Chicago, OBAC (Organization of Black American Culture) was formed in 1967 – COBRA (Coalition of
Black Revolutionary Artists) in 1968 and Afri-COBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) in 1970

‘Weary but watchful, Maude sits by as mother dozes’, 1951

W. Eugene Smith
Ella Watson, US Government Charwoman, 1942
Gordon Parks

Atlanta, 1963-4
Danny Lyon

Picture of the Day: Harlem Basketball Alpha Style in 1939

James Van Der Zee

Collector #5,1975
T. C. Cannon

Indian with a Beer Can, 1969

Fritz Scholder

Neo-Expressionism
VITA, 1984
Julian Schnabel
Accused/Blowtorch/ Padlock, 1986
Pat Ward Williams

Appropriation Art

Tattooed Woman and Flying Saucers, AIDS series, 1988

Masami Teraoka

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

Jeff Koons

Neo-Geo

Two Cells with Conduit, 1987

Peter Halley

Second-generation Feminist Art

Untitled, 1989
Barbara Kruger

Untitled #211, 1989

Cindy Sherman

Mirror, Mirror, 1987-1988

Carrie Mae Weems
Piss Christ, 1987
Andres Serrano