“The woman artist” is a notion that persists today, assumed to have gained the most strength during the Women’s Liberation Movement. Today, the idea behind “woman art shows” is the same as it was in the 60’s and 70’s—to give women a platform in which to share their art, lest they be marginalized in the regular art world. Almost all of the time, these shows focus around female empowerment, and, by association, feminism. But, truth be told, whenever I attend these shows or take part in them, they leave my feminist senses with something to be desired.
A month or so ago, I caught wind of a “feminist show” at Locked Out, one of my favorite Chicago venues that doubles as an anarchist commune. I was pumped about it, expecting to show up and see lots of riot grrrl style bands. But the real show was nothing like that. I walked in at the beginning of a performance art installation that featured many naked women on stage, just standing there and being naked, and what looked like the Bride of Frankenstein with a phone cord wrapped around her neck in the middle of it all. Once the performance was over, the host informed us, “The artist wants you to know you can interpret this installation in anyway you please.” I thought to myself, Really? Because this looks like blatant sexual objectification under the mask of avant garde to me. The next act? An all-male band with a female front woman who, again, made little to no actual feminist commentary. The fact that the only reasonable explanation for this band performing being because of the sole female member added insult to injury, especially when I know of several local all-male bands that deal with feminism in a more direct way. Not only was this show failing as a statement for feminism, but it also struggled to find enough talented, all-female artists to fill the bill.
To be honest, much of women’s art has gone this route—an art student’s desperate, yet failed, attempt at political consciousness—or another route: to try to continue to exemplify feminist art from the Women’s Liberation Movement rather than expand on it in the Third Wave. If you said this was because there have been very few prominent feminist art influences since that time, you’d be half right. If you said this was because feminist art is still trying to market itself as art for women by women when the conversation has been expanded upon immensely, you’d be on target.
“Hey! What’s wrong with making feminist art for the purposes of feminism?” You might ask. Well, there’s nothing wrong with making art for whatever purpose you see fit—or for no purpose at all. What’s wrong is the way this art is presented to its audience, almost always through “woman artist” shows. It’s not that “woman artists” are less talented because they’re women, it’s that most serious artists reach a point in their career where the last thing they want is to have an extra noun tacked onto their title, be it “woman artist” or “gay artist” or “black artist” or “working class artist.” At this point, I should hope the interests of feminism have progressed so that “woman artist” and “feminist artist” should not be synonyms. I know female artists who would like to have nothing to do with feminism and many male artists who frequently give adapt insights to our oppressive climate. Many of those actually talented have the title “woman artists” thrust upon them by others, regardless of whether or not they identify as such. When someone says, “Here’s a poem written by a woman poet,” it’s like saying “Here’s a poem I wouldn’t bother to read if it weren’t written by a woman.”
Not every “woman artist” rejects the notion of being labeled, however, and these artists usually fit into one of two categories: 1) they need the exposure and are willing to play-up their womanhood in order to get it, 2) they recognize that being a “woman artist” and making feminist art will gain them a place in a community. The second one I consider to be much more damaging, because the “woman art” community, in true tradition of Second Wave Feminism, continuously isolates other political opinions, not to mention female artists of color. Yeah, there are still a lot of poetry open mics that feel like old boys clubs, and sometimes when I get up on stage and share my poetry, I know I’m going to have to deal with at least one audience member hitting on me after the show. I have been to plenty of open mics where I was the sole female contributor, and seen as a novelty for this reason. But the fact of the matter is that the objectification of women is really not much better at these “women’s only” shows. Fuck, at the feminist show I previously mentioned the vast majority of the audience were males who find hyper-sexualized art arousing, and the so-called feminist artists were more than ready to give it to them. This climate is no less threatening to women and their legitimacy as artists than any other.
So should woman artists shut up and just try to compete with the white males who still dominate the art world? No, but they could certainly try to look at the art world in a way that isn’t either half a century old or, more often than not, concerned primarily with getting exposure for their political platform (and, by association, themselves). The obvious solution—to me, at least—is for artists who are truly concerned with politics not to isolate themselves to a venue where everyone will share their opinions, but to try to make political art more visible, yet more subtly political, outside these realms. Perhaps it’s easier for me to say this because I live in a major city with a seemingly endless supply of galleries, venues, and cafes seeking artists, but in the age of the internet and the rising popularity of blogs (or other forms of self-publication), there are even more outlets for art and audiences for it than ever before.
One phrase closely associated with feminist art is “the personal is political.” This was true in the 1960’s as it is in our time. But the fact of the matter is, unless you are extremely careful not to isolate your audience, people are more likely to not relate to your personal political poem. It’s dangerously easy to bypass technique in favor of getting a political message across clearly. One should never sacrifice artistic integrity in favor of better voicing their own opinions. Instead, one must look at the challenges they face as both an artist and someone with political opinions, and accept them in order to make great art. After all, in art, it’s not sound opinions that influence people, it’s mind blowing compositions that make people see the world in a whole new way. Let’s focus on that, shall we?
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