This politically charged art form is at the heart of a current Getty Research Institute research project I am leading titled Performance Works: Documenting Feminist Ephemeral Art, which examines the development, documentation, and archiving of feminist performance art.Įxamining the work of the aforementioned artists, whose archives are housed in the Research Institute’s Special Collections, but also branching out to consider less canonical and younger, emerging artists, the project highlights an important collecting area of the Institute, which continues to gain even more significance in the light of present political developments. utilized the most contested but most readily available material-their own bodies-to enter the political arena. Smith, Eleanor Antin, and Harmony Hammond in the U.S. Artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Barbara T. The development of performance art is closely connected with the articulation of feminist issues. During this period, the arts became an important vehicle for women in formulating and expressing criticism of existing conditions, both within society at large as well as within the art world with its notable problem of male dominance. (1)Īs shocking as some of the statements that have surfaced over the last months are, they have led to one good thing: They have brought women’s rights back into the spotlight-at least in the Western world-where they should have remained since the late 1950s and early ‘60s, when feminist movements raised awareness about inequality and systematic discrimination against women. Take the Los Angeles Times of January 22nd, which devoted several pages and articles to the recent Women’s March on Washington-but did not hesitate to squeeze in, between the pages on women’s protests, a two-page advertisement for Calvin Klein, which featured a half-naked, beautiful woman looking passively into the camera on the one side and the picture of women’s underpants on the other.
We were reminded that, in our society, women are still widely regarded and represented as passive objects for pleasure, available for use or disposal.
0 kommentar(er)
