The Feminist Art Movement

by Alice Skewes 

The feminist art movement really took off in the 1960s and 1970s and sought to challenge the dominance of men in the arts industry seeking to gain equality for women and their creations while questioning assumptions about womanhood. The movement used a variety of mediums to create their work including performance art, painting, and crafts that were typically associated with being ‘woman's work’ to highlight the sexism and oppression associated with being a woman. The movement’s goal was to change the relationship between the artist and the viewer through the inclusion of female perspective. With a focus on not just being to be viewed and admired but also to change the political and social environment. As artist Suzanne Lacy declared, the goal of Feminist Art was to "influence cultural attitudes and transform stereotypes."

Artworks and Feminist Artists 

The Womanhouse- 1972 (a mixed media installation)

The Womanhouse was an entire house in residential Hollywood that was set out for demolition which was organised by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro through the feminist arts programme. The 21 all female artists set out to renovate the house and then together they installed site-specific art installations to fit the environment of the house. Most notably they installed a woman trapped within a linen closet to the kitchen where walls and ceiling were covered with fried eggs that morphed into breasts. Many of the artists part of the installation created performances that took place within the Womanhouse to highlight the relationship between women and the home.

The entire collaborative piece was set to be about a woman’s reclaiming of domestic space from where she was to be posited as a wife and a mother which she was seen to be wholly expressive and unconfined by gender assignment. The piece challenged the idea of a ‘traditional woman’ and her role within the home giving women a new way to present her view through art and life. 

Make-up-Make-down- 1978 (9 minute colour video)

The colour video by Croatian artist Sanka Iveković uses a fixed static shot focused on the artist's body, excluding her head. Throughout the video the artist applies a number of cosmetic products, but as her face can’t be seen we can only watch as she handles the makeup, which is done in a sensual manner often slow and deliberate. The intimate caress of the products: stroking the tip of an eye liner, suggestively turning a lipstick up and down in its case and running her hands over a body lotion bottle.

Make-up – Make-down focuses the viewer’s attention on an ordinary yet private activity, and Ivekovic has described the effect of the work as follows:

‘Application of make-up is a discreet activity performed between my mirror and myself … The TV-message is received in the isolation of a private space. The everyday movements that I make are slowed down, thereby giving to the ordinary act of applying make-up the character of a ritual performance.’

The video performance is used to subvert a view of women through media and naturalised association between women and beauty. The artist, instead of presenting the female body as an object for the male gaze, redirects the gaze to the erotised cosmetics. The image isn’t of a put together and made up woman but creates the idea of make-up and getting ready as something that is deeply personal. Presented by the act not being captured in the camera but only something that can be viewed in a mirror by the artist. Make-up-Make-Down represents a deeply radical approach to how we view the body of a woman.

Ivekovic was one of the first women in the former Yugoslavia to identify as a feminist artist, describing it as a 'gesture of disobedience' toward the communist perception of feminism as a 'bourgeois import from the West' (Ivekovic in Katarzyna Pabijanek, "Women's House". Indeed, Ivekovic's artistic output and her feminism were profoundly shaped by her experience of the political situation in Yugoslavia.