Jamie’s Team Pick:
Having the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art right here in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum is pretty terrific. I’ve strolled through The Dinner Party, seen bunches of feminist art exhibits and my favorite of all, attended a Barbara Hammer book tour event!
Judy Chicago (American, b. 1939). The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Mixed media: ceramic, porcelain, textile. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © Judy Chicago. (Photo: © Aislinn Weidele for Polshek Partnership Architects)
But it turns out, not everyone can or wants to live in Brooklyn. And that’s why we have the internet! Because now you can visit the Feminist Art Base via the world wide web and get your fill of feminist art:
Welcome to the Feminist Art Base, the first online digital archive dedicated solely to feminist art. This ever-growing database offers profiles from some of the most prominent and promising contributors to feminist art from the 1960s to the present. Each profile includes multiple images, video and audio clips, short biographies, CVs, and “Feminist Artist Statements.”
In addition to the database, the Brooklyn Musuem website offers podcasts and videos so go ahead and get your art on without weathering the elements of the real out of doors.
Annie Sprinkle. Love Artists, 2003.
Ok. For some reason I can’t comment on some articles as it automatically logs me out when I go to the article.
On the same subject the decision to only allow members who log in to comment is an atrocious idea. I understand that it helps eliminate trolling and whatever, but this site has never had/very very rarely has that problem.
Furthermore many intelligent and constructive ideas and arguments came from anonymous posters, and a lot of them won’t bother creating an account and logging in (especially if it remains as glitchy as it is now). You just stifled a great deal of intelligent conversation and debate, great job.
Jamie I am not directing this at you; this is just simply one of the few places I’m actually able to post because of this new bullshit policy. This is towards whoever made this decision to limit posting.
If you can give me a decent reason then fine, I’ll shut up. As of now I see no benefits whatsoever.
don’t threadjack this post for an admin issue, please email us.
over the past week we’ve had heaps of trolls, many directly attacking our readers and employing appearance-based criticisms of other users and hate speech including atrocious racism and sexism. we changed it to registered commenters until those conversations mellow out and then we’ll be back to the old way in which you don’t need to spend ten seconds registering before commenting.
it’s really important to us that this be a safe space.
I’d also suggest that using phrases like “You just stifled a great deal of intelligent conversation and debate, great job” and “this is just simply one of the few places I’m actually able to post because of this new bullshit policy” doesn’t exactly make us eager to please.
hi raef!
because of pointless (but inflammatory) derailing, horribly racist comments, and some very hurtful personal attacks lobbed at fellow commenters, we’ve temporarily adjusted the commenting to require login.
it’s important to us that autostraddle remain a safe space for all forms of civil and intelligent conversation, and we’ll always take steps to ensure that safety to the best of our ability.
anonymous commenting is and has always been a privilege. when a privilege is abused to the degree that anonymous commenting was last weekend, the privilege is revoked.
it’s unfortunate when these kinds of decisions have to affect the entire readership, but we feel like this temporary sacrifice will be worth it.
for future site-wide concerns, editors can be reached by emailing [laneia@autostraddle.com], which doesn’t require login, or ASS messaging. we appreciate keeping the comments on-topic!
thanks for your feedback!
Questions for the lovely and well-spoken autostraddle community that this article raised for me:
Is there a difference between “feminist art” and art that supports feminism?
Is the sentiment “art for art’s sake” irrelevant to the modern era?
Have we abandoned the cult of aestheticism? Is it worth abandoning?
Is this art really fucking awesome?
I’m sure we can agree on an answer to the last one, but I’d really like to hear what people have to say about the other questions.
I read this article and checked out the link (pretty cool stuff – cheers Jaimie) but was struggling to articulate anything useful on the matter, then you came along with some great questions to help frame a discussion! Unfortunately this means I will now unleash a doom-lengthed comment full of ill-informed philistine opinion.
Is this art really fucking awesome?
To be honest, I don’t know that I can agree that the answer to the last one is automatically yes – because I still often find it hard to judge art presented as feminist or “women’s” art solely on its own merit.
A specific example: the Pompidou in Paris completely re-hung the whole of its main exhibition space last year to show only women artists. I tend to find it pretty numinous-y there even for a regular show, but I can tell you this time it was really overwhelming. Most of the time I was thinking wowee so much ladyart, but ultimately the scope felt too broad to take away much about any individual pieces (apart from Cathy Opie’s Dyke Deck which I went home and immediately bought on ebay).
Germaine Greer wrote an article about it that I thought was a bit harsh, but I do agree with her that I feel bunching work together according to gender blurs the contribution of each individual artist. Where our opinions diverge though, is that I still believe it’s vital to promote art in this way just to get women’s contributions equalised in the consciousness of mortals no so thoroughly-versed in art and feminist history (i.e. me).
I find it kind of funny that the Guerilla Girls posters have become so iconic that they are now part of the art they’re protesting about getting included, as evidenced by both their floor-to-ceiling images in the Pompidou and the daintier desktop-printer-sized flyers in an exhibit at the women’s art museum in Washington (I should point out that this isn’t a criticism and upon seeing the 30ft posters at the Pomp I felt a desperate urge to dry-hump their gorgeous typeface). Theirs is a vital message both for those behind-the-scenes in the art world and for the everyday gallery-goer to drive demand for female artists with their footfall.
However, the selfish consumer in me finds some of the early-wave body-obssessed feminist art almost as boring and personally-irrelevant as the Impressionists, and I just want everything to be equal already so I can skip looking at it.
A lot of interesting questions to consider. I think some of these questions are addressed in responses to the WACK! exhibit. I remember when the exhibit came to PS1.
For those who don’t know the exhibit, it’s: “the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art.”
The MOCA website has a bunch of resources and some commentary on the exhibit.
Oh, to live in Brooklyn and be in the vicinity of all this amazing stuff. But then I’d be buried in snow. WIn some, lose some.
Hey, all the snow melted by Sunday! It’s not so bad..
Well, i just dropped out of school and am looking for cool places to visit… maybe I’ll go to brooklyn