The feminist art movement surfaced in Britain and the US in the 1960s, around the same time as second wave feminism. Feminist art is frequently categorized through the range of mediums used-- painting, photography, performance art, film and sculpture. It focuses on the social and political differences many misogyny affected people experience in their lives, with the aim of creating positive change leading to liberation. However, it is also a genre of art that doesn’t really fit into a specific look.

 

Lucy R. Lippard is an American writer, art critic and activist who stated in 1980 that feminist art is “neither a style nor a movement but instead a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life”. This quote struck me personally as it demonstrates how crucial art is. It has the potential to cause monumental political change, not always in the law, but in individual people finding a community and a means of expressing themselves, just like the amazing community of artists and writers I have found though Feminist Writes!

 

It is no secret that non-male artists have been left in the dark throughout history; there has been no female or non-binary version of Michaelangelo or Da Vinci. Due to our historical role as caregiver, many non-male artists were unable to find time to create art or were unable to attend schools for such. Consequently, the large majority of us who were able to create art historically were wealthy, white women - although even their art had to be “de-gendered” so that it did not look as though it was made by anyone other than a man. It is disappointing that women were more often the subject of art, rather than the actual artists since the female body was viewed as an object to be desired and flaunted for the pleasure of men (thankfully, this all began to change in the 1960s).

Notable artwork emerging from this time was Mary Beth Edelson’s Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) In this piece, Mary appropriated Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Last Supper painting by replacing the heads of Jesus Christ and his followers with 80 photographs of influencial women artists. This image made room for women in a religious and male dominated art world, also bringing attention to other under-appreciated women artists. Some of these artists include Georgia O’Keeffe, Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois and Helen Frankenthaler.