Art has and will forever play a vital role in history. Art can be used as an outlet for peace and creativity. Art can be used as a weapon to help fight for what people believe in. Art can serve as an inspiration for others to make a change. The following people were able to use Art to Empower Women and push for Women’s Rights, while inspiring future generations of artists.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) – Gender Equality
Georgia O’Keeffe is an icon for women’s movement for what she has accomplished with her artwork and outside of her artwork. O’Keeffe was a straightforward Midwesterner who carried herself the way she wanted to instead of the way society wanted her to be. When she arrived in New York in 1916, she became part of the National Women’s Party. Soon she would take the country by storm, creating unabashedly female work and making it in the art with the “big boys.” Georgia O’Keeffe was also the first woman to have a retrospective at MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) and still only one of the few women to do so, establishing what women are capable of achieving in art. This became a victory for all women in the women movement. Moreover, the confidence that Georgia O’Keeffe held was incredible especially for a woman making it in art with the “big boys” during these times stating: “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.” Such an amazing statement, claiming and empowering women that they can be better than man in art or anything that they are passionate for. O’Keeffe’s paintings and drawings stood out unlike no other artists of the time as she often painted flowers and skyscrapers. Critics claimed that her beautiful flowers represented women’s gentiles and how much closer to earth women are. However, O’Keeffe has declined that these were her motives in painting the flowers, but her paintings leave room for many interpretations.
 |
| Black Iris, 1926 by Georgia O'Keeffe |
Frida Kahlo (1907 -1954) – Body Empowerment
Frida Kahlo was raised in a culture where women was secondary to men and women were expected to look the way culture and men wanted them to look. A culture is quite similar to past cultures and current cultures. However, through her art Kahlo showed quite the opposite of oppressed women that her culture portrayed. Kahlo made sure use bright and bold colors when painting women for the world to see. Her art was unapologetically feminine in nature, holding painful female themes that many women were afraid of openly discussing. It was through her paintings and self-portraits where she would empower women to not be belittled by society norms and to fit the picture the way that they wanted to. In fact, Kahlo mixed traditional male and female characteristics that were used to separate sexes as she allowed her eyebrows to grow thick together and kept the hair on her upper lip. In fact, each self-portrait during the 1940s, Frida Kahlo is seen with a mustache shadow over her upper lip along with lipstick and jewelry like the self-portrait below Self-Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). In this portrait, you can see Kahlo express the male and female characteristics that she began to embrace while wearing a thorn necklace causing blood to drip from her neck with a lifeless hummingbird attached to it. This portrait reflects the emotional state that Kahlo was in as she was in the midst of a divorce but still able to maintain a calm face throughout the pain: serving as a message that women can endure more pain that they can imagine. This portrait goes against many norms that society has held for women such as a woman’s weakness and appearance.
 |
| Self-Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940 by Frida Kahlo |
Monica Sjoo (1938-2005): Patriarchy
Monica Sjoo was a self-taught artist who was vital in organizing the first “Women’s Liberation Art Group.” Sjoo along with other women argued that many religious and symbol systems involved mainly male figures causing a sense of inferiority in female power. During the time of home-birthing her second son, Monica Sjoo experienced the true power of a woman’s body which led to her ultimately question the patriarchy that we live in. Therefore, inspired by this experience along with a goddess-worshipping religion Sjoo created a famous painting in 1968 named God Giving Birth. In this painting, God is a woman. This painting caused controversy leading to the artist being threatened for charges of blasphemy and obscenity. During this time, it was unlikely for a female to hold any position of power, let alone be a God. Thus, causing the controversy as many people took offense of such painting. However, this empowered women to not be limited in what they can accomplish because of their gender and rise up since there really is no proof that God is a male.
 |
| God Giving Birth, 1968 by Monica Sjoo |
Elizabeth Catlett (1912-2012): Gender Inequality & Racism
Elizabeth Catlett was an African American artist who focused on themes relating to race, gender, and class through her sculptures and paintings. In the painting below Three Women of America (1990), there are 3 women of different ethnic backgrounds overlapping each other. There is a white woman on the left and a Latina on the right, blending together to create an African American woman. With their faces overlapping, the white woman’s right eye creates one of the African American’s eye and the Latina’s left eye creates the African American’s other eye. In addition, their arms appear to be intertwined as if they are holding one another. However, each woman is wearing distinct clothing to differentiate one another. Painted during the third wave of feminism once the idea for empowerment opened up to women of all race and class, this painting screams women and race. It symbolizes that women from different ethnicities are more alike than they imagine as they share the same gender but their different multi-color clothing shows that each are still unique in their own way. Moreover, if they come together and join forces, they would create a stronger alliance and movement towards gender equality.
 |
| Three Women of America, 1990 by Elizabeth Catlett |
Michele Pred: Political Messages
Michele Pred is an artist that mixes contemporary culture and politics into her artworks. She often likes to create her artworks using a range of materials that hold symbolism such as scissors, knives, purses, etc. She likes uses purses as a sign of economic power that women can hold in society. She was inspired to become an artist during an issue for reproductive rights that started a fire in her over two decades ago. Since then, she creates artwork that fights for women’s reproductive rights, equal pay, and many more rights that women should have. In 2014, Michele Pred created a famous slogan that she uses in her business titled “My Body My Business” (2014). This slogan and artwork were created in retaliation on whether a woman should be allowed for abortion (I’m sure you can assume what her answer was). Her work empowers women to love themselves and not limited themselves to the norms that society continues to place on women.
 |
| My Body My Business, 2014 by Michele Pred |
Resources:
Chadwick, Whitney. “Women, Art, And Society,” Fourth Edition. World of Art. 2007.
The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion of the History of Western Art, Penguin Books, 1998
No comments:
Post a Comment