Arte

Cecilia Villanueva
Mr. Damián Escalante
Art & Culture
26 /oct. / 2010

Studio Lesson: Feminist Art
In the early 1960, twenty years after the World War II ended, the movement called “Feminist Art” begins. “The most far-reaching transformations in both art making and art writing over the past four decades," says Stanford scholar Peggy Phelan. This movement have the arose with severalcultural and social change such as at the Unites States in which they experienced social upheaval from the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, economic prosperity, reforms in the Catholic Church, nostalgia for the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and experimentation with new drugs. Many other countries experienced social unrest of various kinds during this period. In the first places in which ittook place were in the United States, Britain, and Germany.
This movement can be identified as the moment in which the women start to want to change their stereotype of being less than the men, and start to ask themselves what were the differences between them. The principal questions that feminist artists have asked themselves were: How is a woman's stare different from a man's? How does thatdifference influence the ways in which the two genders view the world? And how they view art? One characteristic of the feminist art was that most of these artists have shown great interest in the use of nude figures (both male and female).
Women artists represent what they felted that was very different as what men feel, they revealed their experience such as menstrual feelings and using mediasuch as embroidery that is easily identified as a “women’s work”. Later, feminist arts rejected this approach make an attempt to show the ideas of feminist and womanhood. They pursued the idea of femininity as a masquerade – a set of poses adopted by women to conform to social expectations of womanhood.
One of the most significant figures in feminist art is the artist Barbara Kruger, she started herwork at the 70’s, and her work explores social an political questions, she has a very particular way of expressing her doubt about this issues that are the punchy slogans; commonly use pronouns such as you, I, your, we and they; bold combinations of image and text; and make an innovation of editing techniques and photographic use. She began her career as a graphic designer, art director andphoto editor for magazines. Her main issues to discuss in her pieces of art are the feminism, consumerism and power. The influence of commercial art is evident throughout her work. Her individual mark was the fact that she joined both her own photographs and phrases from her that led to her signature style. Her works make a lot of use of propaganda.
The next photograph on vinyl, called “Not stupidenough” is an artwork from Barbara Kruger; she used her artworks mostly to critic. It seems to be a critique, it represents a double standard while Marilyn is smiling like she is a perfect woman, but the phrases that the artist added to her picture seems what Marilyn thinks, that also many other woman are worried about. Once, Kruger states "Give your brain as much attention as you do your hair andyou'll be a thousand times better off."
The photograph is most related to the aesthetic quality Imitationalism, in first place because it is reflecting the ideas of thousands of women with just one picture and 4 paraphrases; also it is the aesthetic quality of Emotionalism, because this represents what the artist feels against all the women that are more worried about their bodies and aspect,than in their own intellectual human being; and at least the quality of Formalism, because although the artist does use this quality she just employ it for the stand out of the phrases and why they are related to the picture.
The most important principle is emphasis, which is used in the intense white hue on the form of the words of the phrases and how them contrasts with the red background....