Contemporary Five Artists

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974

It is never easy for females to make achievement in any field, and from in many people’s stereotype, from a former period, males always be the control power in art. Before I join the Art and Women class, I know almost nothing about female artists. In this class, the most impressive female artwork is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. To be honest, before I heard the explanation from my professor, I thought it is a party which many female artists join in. However, when I saw it from Brooklyn Museum, it shocked me. It is comprised of a triangle table and 39 elaborate place settings. However, it not stops at beauty. From the explanation of professor and the books, I know that “It represents 1038 women in history—39 women are represented by place settings and another 999 names are inscribed in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests.” It works as a symbolic history of women in Western civilization.
  After visiting Judy Chicago’s work, I have more interests in the development of women artists, so I did some research about this theme on Internet, and I am very glad to share with others. In this way, the following easy will focus on the five female artists who still working today, their representative works, and their contribution to gender, race, class and art history.

Adrian Piper, Self-Portrait

Adrian Piper- Introduced the concept of philosophy
When we talk about female artists, we can’t avoid referring the other theme, abstraction, and philosophy, and there are a famous women artists who have combines philosophy and art. This is Adrian Piper. Adrian Margaret Smith Piper(born September 20, 1948) is an American conceptual artist and philosopher. Her work addresses ostracism, otherness, racial passing, and racism. She ever said that “It seemed that the more clearly and abstractly I learned to think, the more clearly I was able to hear my gut telling me what I needed to do, and the more pressing it became to do it.”  She tries to tell her readers that the slightest glimmerings of doubt about the veracity of opinions, then there will be a piece a roaring success.  She introduced the concept of philosophy into the arts and she wants her artwork to help people confront their racist views.

“Phalli’s Field,” 1965, New York.

       
Yayoi Kusama-Champions sexual liberation
  This is a very famous women artist in Asia, and I ever visited her exhibition in Shanghai and the Broad Museum in Los Angles. Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. The foundation of her art is conceptual art. More importantly, in her works, she always tries to shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism. Outrage against patriarchy and authority are, for example, basic to Kusama’s art. Besides, the most typical characteristic of her is that her work champions sexual liberation, and Kusama subverted many males’ meaning with a feminist twist.

Sarah Maple, Menstruate with Pride (2010).

Sarah Maple-Ideas of female identity
Sarah Maple is a British artist. She works on solve works tackle ideas of female identity, no matter on religious, sexual, or gender variant. Her works are greatly inspired by politics, comedy, and literature. She is good at solve women’s issues in outspoken feminist approaches.  For example, Her paintings spell out certain feminist topics quite directly: subjects include her naked self with the words “using my intelligence” covering her bikini regions; her clothed self in a white dress stained with menstrual blood, surrounded by a group of disgusted onlookers; and a pair of eyes peeking out from a full burqa, on which is a pin that says “I heart orgasms.”

Kiki Smith, Coming Forth，2008

Kiki Smith-‘Feminist artist’?
Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth, and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. On the one hand, her works are not only full of artistry, they are full of reflections on current gender issues and her own judgments. On the other hand,  her work has been claimed for feminism, for politics, for religion, and for a whole range of other issues, but its real intoxicating power lies in the complex ambiguities of its multiple readings. Her pursuit of minimalist art is also reflected in her understanding of feminist rights. She ever said, “My point is that I’ve always found your work so complex that I would hesitate to categorize you as a ‘feminist artist’ any more than a ‘political artist’ or a ‘religious artist’”.

Detail of the Great Wall of Los Angeles ，1976–, by Judith F. Baca, showing 500,00 Mexican Americans Deported.

Judith F. Baca-Public Roles
Judith Francisca Baca (born September 20, 1946) is an American Chicana artist. She is the central figure of the Chicano art movement and is best known for her large-scale public artworks. In her internationally-known The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from their origins to the 1950's. Different with other female artists, Judith F. Baca is University of California, Los Angeles professor of Chicana/o Studies in the School of Social Sciences and a professor of World Arts and Cultures in the School of Art and Architecture. The identity as a university professor gives her more chance to get to know the situation of young age people. This means that different from other artists to express more their own inner activity, Baca play a more important role in teachings.


REFERENCE:
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/sarah-maple-death-threats-feminism-islam-317116
http://yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/
http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/32065/1/your-definitive-guide-to-yayoi-kusama
http://www.askyfilledwithshootingstars.com/wordpress/?p=1128

-Zou Xindi