Especially since the late 1960s, when the feminist art movement can be said to have emerged, women have been particularly interested in what makes them different from males -- what makes art by women different from art by men.
This has been most prominent in the United States, Britain, and Germany, although there are numerous precursors to the movement, and it has spread to many other cultures since the 1970s.
Feminists point out that throughout most of recorded history males have imposed patriarchal (father-centered) social systems (in which they have dominated females). Although it is not the goal of this article to recount the development of feminist theory in general, the history of feminist art cannot be understood apart from it. Feminist art notes that significant in our patriarchal heritage is the preponderance of art made by males, and for male audiences, sometimes transgressing against females. Men have maintained a studio system which has excluded women from training as artists, and a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting and selling their work, albeit somewhat less recently than before.
Feminist art history must be considered as part of this subject. Its proponents have demanded that women's arts from all cultures, of all periods, be included in studies and exhibitions of art. Feminists have asked why there haven't been more women artists, and what kept women artists from producing more and better work. Numerous histories of women artists were published in the 1970s, and some since.
Before the late 1960s most women artists, struggling to participate in the male-dominated art world, had overwhelming disincentives to put feminist meanings into their work, and sought to de-gender their art. On the basis of appearance alone, their work could not be identified as woman-made.
Several countercultural movements arose simultaneously with feminism in the 1960s. At this time the United States experienced social upheaval coming with the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, economic prosperity, the arrival of oral contraceptives, reforms in the Catholic Church, nostalgia for the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and experimentation with psychotropic drugs. Many other countries experienced social unrest of various kinds during this period.
Some gender issues have been of interest to both male and female artists. Although feminist art has arisen from the concerns of artists of one gender, and some of those concerns are sexual in nature, more often than not feminist issues have been about women's power in arenas of which sexuality (reproductive acts and roles) is an important part.
1. What constitutes obscenity and pornography? Where do they come from? What are their results? Are they always transgessive? What place do they have in art?
2. How is a woman's gaze different from a man's.
Although feminist artists have shown great interest in the depiction of nude figures (both male and female), very few feminist artists have shown interest in creating erotic work.
Fluxus
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An art movement begun in 1961/1962, which flourished throughout the 1960s, and into the 1970s. Characterized by a strongly Dadaist attitude, Fluxus promoted artistic experimentation mixed with social and political activism, an often celebrated anarchistic change. Although Germany was its principal location, Fluxus was an international avant-garde movement active in major Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and American cities. Its participants were a divergent group of individualists whose most common theme was their delight in spontaneity and humor. Fluxus members avoided any limiting art theories, and spurned pure aesthetic objectives, producing such mixed-media works as found poems, mail art, silent orchestras, and collages of such readily available materials as scavanged posters, newspapers, and other ephemera. Their activities resulted in many events or situations, often called "Aktions" -- works challenging definitions of art as focused on objects -- performances, guerilla or street theater, concerts of electronic music -- many of them similar to what in America were known as Happenings.
In Latin and other languages, "Fluxus" literally means "flow" and "change." Similarly, the related English word "flux" is used variously to mean "a state of continuous change," "a fusion," and "a gushing of fluid from a body."
George Maciunasz (Lithuanian-American, 1931-1978) coined the name Fluxus. He described it as "a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp." He co-ordinated and edited numerous Fluxus publications.
According to Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986), Fluxus intended to "purge the world of bourgeois sickness . . . of dead art," to "promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, anti-art, promote non art reality . . ." and to "fuse the cadres of cultural, social, and political revolutionaries into a united front and action."
Fluxists include Joseph Beuys, George Brecht (German, 1926-), John Cage (American, 1912-1992), Robert Filliou (French, 1926-1987), Henry Flynt (American, 1940-), Ken Friedman, Al Hansen (1927-1995), Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins (American, 1938-), Ray Johnson (American, 1927-1995), Alison Knowles (American, 1933-), George Maciunasz, Jackson MacLow (American, 1922-), Larry Miller (American), Charlotte Moorman (American, 1940-1994), Yoko Ono (Japanese-American, 1933- ; married to the "Beatle" John Lennon), Nam Jun Paik (Korean-American, 1932-), Daniel Spoerri (Swiss, 1930-), Benjamin Vautier (French, 1935-), Wolf Vostell (German, 1932-), Robert Watts, Emmett Williams (American, 1925-), and La Monte Young (American, 1935-), among many others.
Impressionismback
An art movement and style of painting that started in France during the 1860s. Impressionist artists tried to paint candid glimpses of their subjects showing the effects of sunlight on things at different times of day. The leaders of this movement were: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903), Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926), and Pierre Renoir (French, 1841-1919). Some of the early work of Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906) fits into this style, though his later work so transcends it that it belongs to another movement known as Post-Impressionism.
The American Impressionists: Mary Cassatt (American, 1845-1926), Julian Alden Weir (American, 1852-1919), John Henry Twachtman (American, 1853-1902), Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935), Frederick Carl Frieseke (American, 1874-1939), and others
Neo-Impressionismback
A movement in painting which was an outgrowth of and reaction to Impressionism. It was originated by Georges-Pierre Seurat (French, 1859-1891), who employed a technique called pointillism (also called divisionism, or confettiism), based on the scientific juxtaposition of touches or dots of pure color. His most famous painting is A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884, 1884-1886, oil paint on canvas, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago). The brain blends the colors automatically in the involuntary process of optical mixing. Other neo-impressionists include Camille Pissaro (French, 1830-1903), Paul Signac (French, 1863-1935), Theodoor van Rysselberghe (Belgian, 1862-1926), and Henry Edmond Cross (French, 1856-1910).
Photo-Realismback
Realist paintings and sculptures involving thorough reproduction of detail. In painting the results were nearly photographic-- in fact made from photographs (although painters had been working from photographs since the early days of photography).
Although its center was in the United States, the Photo-Realism movement was also strong in Europe from the late 1960s into the 1970s, where his type of illusionism is known principally as superrealism.
Among the most highly regarded American photorealist painters are Richard Estes (1932-), Chuck Close (1940-), Audrey Flack (1931-), Charles Bell (1935-1995), and Ralph Goings (1928-).
Pop Artback
An art movement and style that had its origins in England in the 1950s and made its way to the United States during the 1960s. Pop artists have focused attention upon familiar images of the popular culture such as billboards, comic strips, magazine advertisements, and supermarket products. Leading exponents are Richard Hamilton (British, 1922-), Andy Warhol (American, 1928?1930?-1987), Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923-1997), Claes Oldenburg (American, 1929-), Jasper Johns (American, 1930-), and Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925-).
Post-Impressionismback
A French art movement that immediately followed Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. The artists involved, usually meaning Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906), Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890), Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901) showed a greater concern for expression, structure and form than did the Impressionist artists. Building on the works of the Neo-Impressionists, these artists rejected the emphasis the Impressionists put on naturalism and the depiction of fleeting effects of light.
The term was coined by the British art critic and painter, Roger Fry (1866-1934), on the occasion of an exhibit of works by these artists, which he curated in 1910 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Other artists who were involved in this movement during a portion of their careers were Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954), Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and George Braque (French, 1882-1963).
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoodback
A group of English artists which formed an association in 1848 to recapture the beauty and simplicity of the medieval world. Their painting style and art movement reacted to the sterility of English art, along with the materialism resulting from England's industrialization. They identified Raphael (Italian, 1483-1520) with the scientific interests of Renaissance art, which they felt had led to modern technological development. They aimed to study nature, to sympathize with what is direct, serious and heartfelt in earlier art, and to infuse their works with literary symbolism, bright colors, and attention to detail.
The founders of the Brotherhood were the painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) [a photo of him by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, English mathematician and writer, author of Alice In Wonderland , as well as photographer, 1832-1898), 1863], William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), John Everett Millais (1829-1896), James Collinson (1825-1881), Frederic George Stephens (1828-1907), sculptor Thomas Woolner (1825-1892), and writer William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919), the painter's brother.
Their initial efforts brought them much condemnation, but in 1851 they gained the support of the influential art critic John Ruskin (English, 1819-1910).
By 1854 however, the Brotherhood had fallen apart. Apart from it came a second wave of Pre-Raphaelitism in Victorian art, chiefly characterized by pseudo-medieval subjects and ethereal female beauties painted by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), and John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937) are among the later exponents of this tradition.
Realism or the Realist school and realism - The realistic and natural representation of people, places, and/or things in a work of art. The opposite of idealization. One of the common themes of postmodernism is that this popular notion of an unmediated presentation is not possible. This sense of realism is sometimes considered synonymous with naturalism.
And Realism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects.
Romanticism and the Romantic schoolback
An art movement and style that flourished in the early nineteenth century. It emphasized the emotions painted in a bold, dramatic manner. Romantic artists rejected the cool reasoning of classicism -- the established art of the times -- to paint pictures of nature in its untamed state, or other exotic settings filled with dramatic action, often with an emphasis on the past. Classicism was nostalgic too, but Romantics were more emotional, usually melancholic, even melodramatically tragic.
Paintings by members of the French Romantic school include those by Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824) and Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863), filled with rich color, energetic brushwork, and dramatic and emotive subject matter. In England the Romantic tradition began with Henry Fuseli (Swiss-English, 1741-1825) and William Blake (1757-1827), and culminated with Joseph M. W. Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837). The German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) produced images of solitary figures placed in lonely settings amidst ruins, cemetaries, frozen, watery, or rocky wastes. And in Spain, Francisco Goya (1746-1828) depicted the horrors of war along with aristocratic portraits.
Social Realismback
A type of realism which is more overtly political in content, critical of society, marked by its realistic depiction of social problems. Paintings by Jean François Millet (French, 1814-75), a painter associated with the Barbizon school, such as The Angelus (1854-59, Louvre) and The Gleaners (1857, Louvre), are considered early examples of social realism. The greatest impact of this art movement was felt in the first half of the twentieth century, however. Mexican muralists Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) strongly influenced many North American social realist and WPA artists. Some of these northern artists emerged from the Ashcan school, while others, like Ben Shahn (American, 1898-1969), evolved separately. Be careful not to confuse social realism with socialist realism.
Surrealismback
A twentieth century avant-garde art movement that originated in the nihilistic ideas of the Dadaist and French literary figures, especially those of its founder, French writer André Breton (1896-1966). At first a Dadaist, he wrote three manifestos about Surrealism -- in 1924, 1930, and 1934, and opened a studio for "surrealist research."
Influenced by the theories of the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (German, 1856-1939), the images found in surrealist works are as confusing and startling as those of dreams. Surrealist works can have a realistic, though irrational style, precisely describing dreamlike fantasies, as in the works of René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967), Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1988), Yves Tanguy (French, 1900-1955), and Alfred Pellan (Canadian, 1906-1988). These artists were partly inspired by Symbolism, and partly the Metaphysical Painting of Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, 1888-1978). Or, it could have a more abstract style, as in the works of Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983), Max Ernst (German, 1891-1976), and André Masson (French, 1896-1987), who invented spontaneous techniques, modeled upon the psychotherapeutic procedure of "free association" as a means to eliminate conscious control in order to express the workings of the unconscious mind, such as exquisite corpse.
Symbolismback
An art movement which rejected the purely visual realism of the Impressionists, and the rationality of the Industrial Age, in order to depict the symbols of ideas. Influenced by Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, it thrived in France in the late nineteenth century, its influence spreading throughout much of Europe. Rather than the precise equivalents of ideas or emotions, its symbols were meant to be more mysterious, ambiguous suggestions of meanings. The work of one group, including Piérre Puvis de Chavannes (French, 1824-1898), Gustave Moreau (French, 1826-1898), and Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916), took a literary approach, employing some of the imagery of Symbolist writers, including such icons as severed heads, monsters and glowing or smoky spirits, synthesized from elements of Bible stories and ancient myths. Later, the imaginative incongruities in these works were to influence the Surrealists. Another group, taking a formal approach, in which linear stylizations and innovative uses of color produced emotional effects, included Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903), Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890) and the Nabis.