rough notes

“I have had to go to men as sources in my painting because the past has left us so small an inheritance of woman’s painting that had widened life….Before I put a brush to canvas I question, “Is this mine? Is it all intrinsically of myself? Is it influenced by some idea or some photograph of an idea which I have acquired from some man?”

Georgia O’Keefe
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/modern/Georgia-OKeeffe.html

For an interview with Georgia O’Keefe visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYwKRVJaNEA

What is feminism?

Some people have found it helpful to think about the history of the feminist movement in terms of first, second and third waves. Broadly speaking, these are:

• First wave – from the formation of the National Women’s Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1867 to full female enfranchisement in the UK in 1928.
• Second wave – from the feminist movements associated with the American civil rights movement of the early 1960s to equality legislation in the UK in the 1970s.
• Third wave – from the 1980s to the present day, more about social and political change than legislative change.

Feminist art and design

Guerrilla Girls

Hannah Höch (1889–1978)

Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980)

Frida Kahlo (1907–54).

Martha Rosler

Visit the links below to discover more about feminism and feminist art:
http://www.ehow.com/facts_4910333_history-feminist-art-movement.html
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Martha-Rosler.html

• What were the social and political conditions that made these artists communicate in the ways they did?
• How is this demonstrated in their work?
• How did these artists establish their own artistic
  identity?

Feminist photography

Chapter 6 of your course reader (pp.292–96).

A subjective voice

The human figure has been used in landscape art and photography to highlight a range of interpretations:

• ownership and conquest: ‘prospect paintings’ symbolised of the landowner’s property or responsibility. Nineteenth-century Western landscape photographers often included themselves (or fellow member of the team) as a heroic figure, struggling in adverse circumstances to achieve remarkable imagery.
• add scale: design element to emphasise the vastness of the structures within the landscape.
• female nude within the landscape is a typical subject from 19th century to magazine photography today. Some photographers (eg Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Bill Brandt) have aligned the undulating topographic forms of the landscape to the curves of the female body.

Landscape and Gender

4.4 ‘Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men’

In advertising, where the financial costs to the client are so considerable and the risk of a campaign backfiring so great, everything within the advert – from the minutiae of the photographic composition, the styling, the juxtaposition of strap lines, other texts and logos – is produced to a plan, designed to communicate a particular message to a specific demographic.

Inspiration