Feminist Art Movement

The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, and often including such self-organizing tactics as the consciousness-raising group, the movement began in the 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s as an outgrowth of the so-called second wave of feminism. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period."

The 1960s was period of civil rights and gay and lesbian rights movements and protests against war. It was also a period when women artists wanted to gain equal rights as men within the established art world, influenced by modernist movements "utopian ideals," and to create feminist art, often in non-traditional ways, to help "change the world."

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) and German-American Eva Hesse (1936-1970) explore some of the themes in feminist art, like domestic life, personal experience and the women's body.

On 20 July 1964 Yoko Ono, an avant-garde artist, singer, and activist, presented Cut Piece at the Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan where she sat still as parts of her clothing were cut off of her, which meant to protest violence against women. She performed it again at Carnegie Hall in 1965. Her son, Sean, participated in the artist performance on 15 September 2013 at the Théâtre le Ranelagh in Paris. The Guardian's Jonathan Jones considered it "one of the 10 most shocking performance artworks ever."

Women artists, motivated by feminist theory and the feminist movement, began the feminist art movement in the 1970s. Feminist art represented a shift away from modernism, where art made by women was put in a different class to works made by men. Or, as Griselda Pollock and Roszika Parker put it—a separation of Art with a capital "A" from art made by women produced a "feminine stereotype".

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