Women made major contributions to the modern movement simply because it was easier than ever before for women to make art, “The Philadelphia Centennial exposition of 1876 represented a milestone in women’s struggles to achieve public visibility in American cultural life, Approximately one-tenth of the works of art in the United States section were by women, more than in any other country’s display.”(Chadwick 120). Chadwick recognizes how women were the backbone to consumer society in the following quotation: “More recently, art Historians have begun to explore the ways that modern women mobilized a new range of female gazes within a developing consumer society. Women’s growing participation in the consumer culture that increasingly defines modernity during the second half of the nineteenth century” (Chadwick 242). Art produced by women was commercially accepted and led to the creation of Associated Artists wich was made up entirely of women producing and designing pieces such as textiles and embroideries. Similarly in Germany women who attended the Bauhaus such as Gunta Stölzl were making intricate modern designs in textile making the best of what the masters considered “women’s work” but was later put at a halt completely with the rise of the Nazi party. The dawn of modernism was an opportunity for new women artists to express themselves in the new found freedom they had in the 20th century which built up from the “craft revolution” which brought “acceptable” mediums for women to express themselves with such as fabric.
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| Tapestry made by Gunta Stölzl at the Bauhaus (1926-27) |
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| Pictorial Quilt by Harriet Powers (1895-98) |
Eventually came the postmodern movement which did away with the preconceptions of what art should be like in the “modern” sense. Additionally, postmodernism was fueled by the criticism of social structures in mind, such as the patriarchal structure that had been holding women back from becoming credible artist compared to their male peers. A clear example of this is Sylvia Sleigh’s rendition of “The Turkish Bath” where she challenges the male gaze and the female nude by flipping the script and presenting us with the male nude. Chadwick describes this movement in the following quotation:”By the 1980’s, it was a commonplace of feminist theory to view visual representation as a field divided along gender lines, with an active male artist or spectator opposed to a passive female object.” (Chadwick 382). Postmodernism allowed women to explore new mediums and new ideas in art which allowed them to make their own mark in a male-dominated space.
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| The Turkish Bath by Sylvia Sleigh (1973) |
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| The Turkish Bath by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1863) |
The rise of modernism slowly allowed women to squeeze their way into the world of art; they took what they were given and began to express themselves, flourishing in the impressionist depiction of domestic scenes that they were familiar with and continuing to explore other mediums yet still limited by the gender divide they faced. Postmodernism was a triumph for women artist because not only were they able to get into the boys club of modern art, they were able to make art their own by bringing new ideas to the table and challenging old ones.
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| The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist Poster by Guerrila Girls (1987) |
Works Cited:
The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.
Chadwick Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Fifth Edition. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.
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