The Rise Of Women In Art
July 12, 2011 No Comments
If you can’t name very many beyond Georgia O’Keefe and Yoko Ono, it might be because women only really started getting exposure in the art world starting in the late sixties. For a crash course on the struggle women have fought for artistic recognition, look to Lynn Hershman Leeson’s project !Women Art Revolution.
Although the piece de resistance of this endeavour is the film of the same name that she started filming 40 years ago and which includes countless interviews of key figures in the feminist art movement such as Judy Chicago, Carolee Schneeman or the Guerrilla Girls (to name a few), !Women Art Revolution, the graphic novel and curriculum guide, also provides a wealth of information for anyone seeking to expand their cultural horizon outside the male canon we know all too well.
The actual comic is very short but it encapsulates the main hallmarks that lead to women being closer to having a legitimate place in fine arts. With its naive style but accurate caricatures of the women who made this part of the feminist movement advance, we get a clear overview of how far women have come. Thanks to its simple black on white drawing and the fact that it was printed at the same location as the classic underground Zap Comix, it pays homage to the roots of the movement and the revolutionary aspect of these women’s work.
The book also contains a transcript of the full interview Hershman Leeson did with Marcia Tucker, who founded New York City’s The New Museum on the Bowery. Her philosophy that “Every woman’s success is all of our success” reminds us that although art is not often seen as a priority in society, a strong female presence in so-called high culture is necessary for us all to succeed, especially when the variety of female voices in art that emerged was (and remains) very broad.
!Women Art Revolution (the companion book) shows that best with its exhaustive curriculum guides for both visual arts and film and video works put together by Drs. Claire Dagle, Krista Geneviève Lynes and Fiona Summers. Both contain more academic references and books to read to last you a lifetime but again, that only highlights all that women have to add to the contemporary art scene that needed recognition.
But what transpires most out of this book is the spirit of collaboration that defines the feminist movement and was particularly important in getting women in museums and exposing their art in America. It took many women to put this compact feminist art Bible together, just like it took a whole generation of women to reach more equality among the genders on the art scene.
It’s a truly inspiring tale and with this book, Hershman Leeson not only gives her readers all the tools to become a scholar on the subject, she makes them want to be one.
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