Feminist Art Theory: Pollock, Lippard, and !Women, Art, Revolution

Griselda Pollock: What’s wrong with images of women? 

Citation: Pollock, Griselda. “What’s wrong with images of women?”  from Looking On.  ed R Betterton London Pandora Press, 1987.

Summary, Important Quotations, and My Reactions/Responses:

         This is a short text that explores the question pitched in the title. Pollock emphasizes many points throughout the text surrounding this question, beginning with her point that there needs to be more criticism about  “women’s position in, and in relation to, the history of art and representations.” She continues to write about the problems surrounding the term “Images of Women,” specifically that there exists a “lack of theoretical definitions of what terms like sexist, patriarchal, or bourgeois mean when applied to images.” In doing so she verbalizes the need for a language and vocabulary in order to discuss what she sees as problematic in representations of women, historical or contemporary, and that this lack of language hinders the ability to solve these problems, something I found pretty interesting….the idea that a problem can’t be remedied if it can’t be discussed, and that it can’t be discussed if a language doesn’t exist to discuss it with.

She continues her argument with examples of images of women in advertising versus images of men in advertising, and continually points out how women are negatively objectified in advertising as opposed to men who aren’t. She alludes to the idea of the owner-spectator relationship that John Berger references in Ways of Seeing, specifically how images of women allow for the spectator (a male) to be the owner of the woman (who is reduced to commodity) in the advertisement. This she believes isn’t apparent in advertising images of men (who are the signified as well as the owner of who is signified)...the problem she sees as, “What is lacking is any conceivable position of ownership or possession [of the male] offered to the spectator [is this spectator presumably female?]” (my italics).

This concept I partially didn’t understand, yet I felt in disagreement with. In my opinion when anyone, male or female, is photographically represented nude for spectators, there exists a certain (yet questionable) vulnerability about them, which in turn can allow whoever is the spectator to assume some sort of possession/ownership over whoever is being signified. Although for me, the term ownership is problematic. When I see someone naked do I personally assume ownership over them? NO.  But am I in control because I have a photo of them naked at my disposal to do whatever I want with? …I guess so…? What makes them, the signified, more vulnerable than me, the spectator? The fact that they are naked and I am presumably clothed? Does Pollock want the ability to assume ownership over the naked males seen in the photographs she uses as examples, just how males presumably assume ownership over naked females in photographs?

These questions were partially problematic  for me to ask myself, and that made me uncomfortable because I am a woman, and I am feminist,  yet I began to think that I was contributing to this so-called “problem” merely because I was not in total agreement. Do I think that women are too often negatively objectified in images? Yes. But do I think that there exists a capability for men to be negatively objectified as well? Yes. When anyone is represented in a photograph, they are objectified in one way or another…and the idea of the spectator turning into an owner of whatever is represented in the photograph is very interesting, because it makes sense the more I think about it.

                I did have one more major issue with her writing in general. Her language was difficult to understand and I don’t appreciate how she speaks in absolutes. She brought up another point that I didn’t agree with at all, and this had to do with Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self Portrait with Amber Necklace. Pollock considers this painting a “failure not simply because an alternative iconographic tradition did not yet exist (for that presumes the possibility of simply creating one) but rather, I would maintain, because of the inseparability of the signifier and the signified.” Again, her language here is confusing, and from what I gather Pollock is trying to state that this self-portrait is a failure for a feminist agenda, because Modersohn-Becker is intentionally representing herself in the same way that men have been representing women throughout art history…she isn’t breaking from this tradition of the objectified female and when we look at this work we could easily assume the artist to be male because of this tradition, which to me is a strength of the painting, for it challenges this convention.  But to me the real strength of this painting lies in the very thing that Pollock disagrees with: the inseparability of the signifier and the signified. Modersohn-Becker is taking control of her body and is in control of how she intends for it to be represented. What could be more feminist than that?

Lucy Lippard, Sexual Politics: Art Style

Citation: Lippard, Lucy. Sexual Politics: Art Style.  Art in America vol. 59, issue 5. 1971.

Summary:

This short text describes in Lippard’s words the sexism that existed in the patriarchal and male-dominated art world in 1971, as women artists were just beginning to wage war in attempts to gain equal representation and reputation in relation to male artists. Lippard uses statistics and first hand experiences to delineate examples of sexism favoring male artists, and lists 9 prominent examples of where she believes this discrimination against women in the art world exists. She also explains the efforts that are fighting against this sexism and discrimination, with WAR (Women Artists in Revolution) and with the AWC, the Ad Hoc Women Artists’ committee. Something I found pathetic yet humorous at the same time was the “‘Did a Little Girl Like You Make That Great Big Sculpture?’ syndrome,” for I feel it is something I can relate to in my own artistic practice, but not as anything discriminatory, but often because my sculptures are sometimes much too large for my own strength and I often need help loading them into the kilns.

Responses:

                I thought this text was really revealing in the sense that it shared valuable, eye-opening statistics having to do with the unfair representations of women in big-name museums, and I really appreciated reading the personal beliefs about where women felt that discrimination against them existed in the art world, adapted from real-life examples. However I put this text aside feeling a little uncomfortable in the sense that I want to relate more to these feminist efforts, yet I do not feel like a victim to this sexist discrimination as the women described in the text do. In our art department for example, I feel that the presence of men and women as teachers and professors is pretty much equal, and that the women in these authoritative positions have just as much influence as the males do. Women in our department are tenured professors just as some men are. I look around our class and there are more females than males, and I am thankful that the reason we got into the BFA program was contingent upon skill and dedication, and nothing more than that. I have never felt that being female has gotten in the way of me accomplishing anything art related, and I feel I have received equal treatment from male professors as my male classmates. So I asked myself, do these struggles/sentiments/concerns exist today for women artists? Are these concerns as relevant or problematic today as they were back then? Then I realized that I probably don’t feel like a victim because of these incredible activist women and their efforts, and that in my position as a young female art student I have a lot to be thankful for. I feel uneasy that I do not have much more to say about an issue as important as feminism beside this…

Lynn Hershman-Leeson, !Women, Art, Revolution (!WAR)

Citation: !Women, Art, Revolution. Dir. Lynn Hershman-Leeson. 2010. DVD.

Summary: !Women, Art, Revolution is an incredible documentary that celebrates the efforts of women artists and activists in their revolutionary feminist struggle against the sexism and discrimination in the male-dominated high art world. In the film we are introduced to a variety of these women, including Judy Chicago, Nancy Spero, Howardena Pindell, Hannah Wilke, Adrian Piper, among others, and of course the Guerilla Girls. It’s an extensive and informative overview of the numerous struggles encountered by women in the art world and a look into the legacy these women left behind, of course noting that the fight has subsided, but is not over. 

Responses: I found this film extremely eye-opening, uplifting, and inspiring, and again, I am thankful that these women fought so hard for the freedoms that I enjoy as a young aspiring female artist who has never felt like a victim to sexism or discrimination due to her sex, and I realize that this fight for equality for all should not subside because of these acquired freedoms.  Some of the things I found most interesting was the idea of a feminist art as a new kind of art in response to the masculine and patriarchal, domineering aesthetic of modernism and minimalism…modes of art that believe that because the art is content-less, it is a higher art form because of its freedom from narrative and politics. In opposition, this is where feminist art finds its strength: in narrative, in politics, in elevating the arts that were previously perceived as craft, in being activist, provocative, and confrontational, and making art that flourished outside of the museum context in response to sexism and a male-dominated high-art agenda. Also, I hadn’t realized before watching this film that performance art is inherently feminist, being a main source of artillery for feminist artists at this time, for as a new art form, it presented more opportunities for activist and experimental art. I also found it interesting that many of these female artists were divorcing their husbands at the time to pursue their activist and feminist agenda. This made me think back to some of the earliest feminists that I have studied in other classes, in particular Mary Wollstonecraft. Being one of the first feminists in Europe in the late 1700s, she advocated that women were not inherently inferior to men, but that they lacked education and just appeared as inferior because of this lack of education. She advocated for women’s self-empowerment to educate themselves and be the best they can be given the circumstances they are living within…which actually meant being a better wife to their husband so that their husbands in response would not leave them. That may seem anti-feminist, but I believe that being the best woman you can be within your circumstances is no doubt an early form of feminism. As for !Women, Art and Revolution, look how far we’ve come!!

   
Although I do not make art that is heavily feminist, or feminist at all, in content, I do find myself indebted to these feminist efforts. Since I don’t feel victimized, I don’t think that it is a bad thing that my art is not overtly feminist, although within my art I do find some feminist characteristics…like an indebtedness to “craft,” an interest in collage, and subject matter that occasionally explores nurturing, motherly notions...