W.A.R.: Women, Art and Revolution!

 

  Conclusion

  The feminist movement of the 1970s put artwork made my women right in everyone's face and made them view it. The feminist artists were saying that we are here and we are not going anywhere, forcing the well deserved space for female artists. Groups like the Woman's Action Coalition and the Guerilla Girls fought and confronted head on the issues of womans inequality and the uneven representation of woman artists in galleries. The first women to hold curatorial positions also came out of this time, and I think that this greatly helped female artists because they now had someone that was actively seeking woman's work to display in the male dominate field. While the art world is still mostly male dominate today, I feel like Womans voices are heard and taken into more consideration because of the work that the feminist movement did. There is more of a focus now on inclusion for woman and people of color than there has ever been, so hopefully now more people can walk into a gallery and see an artist they feel like they can relate to. 

Notes 

• 1968-still at war in Vietnam, while Civil Rights, free speech, and woman’s liberation was goin on at home
• Lynn Lester- Berkeley graduate, filmed and interviews woman artists 
• Yvonne Rainer- “Trio A” 1966/1978, went through soho streets with black armbands on
• Judith Baca-trained as a minimalist painter, junction between content and creating minimalist art
• Adrian Piper- got into performance art because of the Kent state student killings and Nixon invading Cambodia
• Because of Cambodia invasion, Robert Morris closed his exhibition at the Whitney Museum, Robert Rauschenberg and Carl Andre withdrew their work from the Venice Biennale and together they opened the Biennale in exile in New York City, but all the artists shown were white men
• Faith Ringgold got into contact with the organizers and threatened to protest
• WSABAL: women students and artists for black liberation
• Women discovered a new way to talk about work, for example they would talk about content
• 21 students under Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s supervision created Womanhouse, transforming a vacant Hollywood home into a feminist house
• Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven, and Sheila de Bretteville left Cal Arts and formed the feminist studio workshop
• first classes in Sheilas living room, and then they found their own space
• Woman taking the body back and using it as the subject in art pieces, performance art
• Media became a bigger platform
• “The Dinner Party” Judy Chicago, 1979, 39 plate settings, 13 on each side, each represents a woman of achievement in Western civilization 
• 1979, premiered in San Fransisco
• Museums backed out of showing the dinner party, talked about it in congress for an hour and 20 minutes, only the men talked about it
• “The Great Wall of Los Angeles”, Judith Baca and SPARC, 1974, bring youth in from local neighbor hoods that had trouble with police and work on the project, make a mural of Californias history
• Guerrilla girls, pointed out the inequality of women artist being shown in galleries and exhibitions, went after successful male artists that were not using their platform to point out the inequality 
• Maris Tucker, one of the first women curators the Whitney Museum hired, got fired after 8 years, created the New Museum in New York, still thriving contemporary museum
• Rachel Rosenthal, immigrated to the US from Nazi Germany