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Keywords
Feminism, Art, Women, Society, Politics, USA
Abstract
The US feminist art movement of the 1970s is examined through selected works written by artists, critics, and historians during the 1990s. Books, exhibition catalogues, dissertations, and articles place the movement within the broader contexts of art history and criticism, women's history, and cultural studies. The art includes painting, drawing, collage, mixed-media, graphics, installations, video, and performance. An increasing historical perspective allows scholars to examine the movement's institutions and unresolved issues surrounding class, race, and sexual preference. Background is provided by an introductory essay, which summarizes the movement's facets of protest, pedagogy, networks and professional associations, and art making while noting examples of publications and institutions that form part of the record of the movement. This article will be useful to librarians and scholars in art, women's studies, history, sociology, and cultural studies.
Introduction
The feminist art movement in the USA developed around the time of several activist movements calling for changes in society including women's liberation, black power, gay liberation, and anti-Vietnam war protests. These movements can be related to events outside the USA, such as the African uprisings against colonialism. The translation of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir into English in 1953 also served as a catalyst for the women's liberation movement in the USA (Cottingham, 1994, p. 33). Although much has been written about the feminist movement, its details and expression within various communities still await historical documentation (Moravec, 1998, p. 14). It is within this context that I will approach the literature written during the 1990s about the US feminist art movement of the 1970s. The Grove Dictionary of Art-Online defines feminist art as:
... work that is rooted in the analyses and commitments of contemporary feminism and that contributes to a critique of the political, economic, and ideological power relations of contemporary society. It is not a stylistic category nor simply any art produced by women (Turner, 2001).
Writings about the feminist art movement reflect the spheres of inquiry that are affected by the movement - art history and criticism, feminism, history, sociology, and women's studies. The works selected for this annotated bibliography place the movement within the broader contexts of art history and criticism, women's...