Linda Nochlin

we are presenting a panel discussion that artforum held in august of 2003 in class this week. i will be talking about Linda Nochlin. she mentioned a few artists:
sam taylor-wood

and piplotti rist

this rist video isnt talked about but i think it might be my favorite.

i dont think i understand what she is trying to say conceptually but i am interested in how much she seems to be referencing minoan snake priestesses (art history finally paid off):

quick post....

im at work, i am listening to this podcast about race and identity. are identity politics dead? i think im tired of everything i am interested in dying (feminism, identity, art, painting, photo...). but the interview is pretty good at least. here's the link to the podcast page. which then has a link to the interview. i cant write more, i probably shouldnt even be doing this now.....

entitlement

Entitlement-for my generation (“Y?” or are we just unnamed?), there has been a lot of negative talk about how we feel entitled to everything. If I am part of the “Y” generation, my understanding of it has been that it is Y in a sense of the question- why? Or why not? Especially said in a whiny tone. We assume we should be handed things- jobs, money, happiness. In the readings this week entitlement was mentioned a few times in reference to the 3rd wave. I am thankfully part of a generation of women who grew up with a lot of overt feminist influence. Overt in a way that I can yell back at my harassers on the street, I can choose to flaunt my sexuality for my own pleasure or not-depending on who I am portraying that day. I do feel entitled to my rights as a woman, but I don’t see this as a negative thing. I don’t think that means that I passively accept my role as a woman and I do feel strongly about moving women’s rights forward. And if the things my foremothers fought for (voting, the right to choose, equality in the workplace) were threatened, I do think there would be a vocal outcry.
All of this was in mind while reading about the “Bad Girls” show(s) of 1994. Although, I don’t remember this show, the idea of “bad girls” and riot grrrls and even girl power all influenced the way I grew up. Some of the criticism for this show written by Jan Avgikos seemed to ring false to me. Avgikos has a problem with the idea of putting together art by mainly women artists that is funny. My understanding of this criticism is that Avgikos believes the art won’t be taken seriously if it is funny. I love the idea of funny art made by women, in our culture women are never considered (or allowed) to be funny the way that men are. In a recent pop-culture podcast I listen to, 2 female comedians started a group for women comics called “Offensive Women.” They felt they had to do this because there is a serious shortage of female comedians who are taken seriously. Another piece of criticism that Avgikos offers is that the didactic of good girl/bad girl doesn’t exist anymore, so the show is put together on a false premise. The idea that girls don’t have to worry about this didactic anymore is ridiculous. I realize that it may be better now than in 1950, but it is still an issue. Just last week an article in the NYTimes discussed how this topic is still relevant. The grown up version of this- whore/prude is still active too, why else would women who dress in a revealing manner get blamed for getting raped? But that leads to a whole different discussion….

why have there been no great women artists? and is feminism dead?

“Why have there been no great women artists?” according to Linda Nochlin, this question is incredibly important for many reasons. This one single question begins to break down art history as a whole and even the rest of known written history. When this question is initially asked my first instinct is to think that there must have been, we just haven’t found them. or some people think, maybe women are just not capable of greatness. Art of the problem with “greatness” or “genius” is that white men have done the deciding of who is great or genius. And this genius is an innate (natural) talent that would have come through under any circumstances. Except that Nochlin puts forth that there have been no great artists from the aristocracy either. I was surprised to hear that, so basically all great artists are white and middle class. Although according to the article maybe the aristocracy just thought of art as a hobby and the middle class women were too busy to make art. I have argued in the past (with my sisters that are non artists) that everything about art can be taught. As an artist, I have no natural/innate talent for art that my sisters don’t have. I just had a desire and interest to be taught art. The “art academy” has socialized me as an artist and I have practiced until (almost) perfect. It is interesting that art, as an institution is looked up as so different from the rest of society. It is thought that we have natural abilities in whatever media we use, whereas I would never think that a doctor was born knowing how to diagnose diseases or a mechanic grew up automatically knowing about cars. I know that those professions take years of training and hands on practice, which is just what artists do, we are just drawn to some type of visual expression.

Being in an identity class, I think we will be discussing many types of “posts.” In the article “feminism, incorporated:reading ‘postfeminism’ in an anti-feminist age,” Amelia Jones describes different types of postfeminism. Like postmodernism, there seems to be an idea of postfeminism as after-feminism and a postfeminism that is anti-feminism. Jones seems to be arguing in this article that both types of postfeminism are negative. The first type of postfeminism seems to come from the idea that feminist art is just a part of postmodernism or could be considered postmodern feminist art-therefore postfeminism. Often many art critics and historians lump feminist art in with postmodernism and therefore diminish the importance of the feminist critique. Photography has played a strong role in helping to objectify women. Even female photographers that are attempting to criticize the consumer culture get passed off into postmodernism.
The other part of postfeminism, the part I consider to be anti-feminist, also appropriates feminist language to make arguments that feminism is dead or unnecessary. After second wave feminism, many media outlets broadcast the idea the women were tired of trying to be equal and were happy staying at home with their families. The women who didn’t want to go back to their domestic lives were seen as lesbians or destructive (or both). But even this wild woman was still always pictured as white and middle class. And often the woman would be brought back to her domestic place and live happily ever after. Although this article was written more than 15 years ago, I think many of its ideas are still relevant. Many contemporary books speak of getting back to family and home, this article published recently about being a “female male chauvinist,” and even the fact that Hillary Clinton seems to get criticized more often for what she is wearing than what her actual policies are. I cannot comprehend how anyone could begin to think that feminism is dead, nor should it die anytime soon.

random conversation

i am still kind of in the middle of the reading for the week, i finished the first article (nochlin "why have there been no great women artists?) and am part of the way through the second (jones "feminism incorporated: reading postfeminism in an anti-feminist age). i had been reading the jones article when i was asked by a co-worker about what i was reading. i told him the title and he just made a yucky face. then later he asked how my reading was going and i told him, and he asked about whether we were in an anti-feminist age. my answer was that i hadn't yet gotten to jones explanation of this but i could see how we could be. my co-worker (lets call him "nick") then says, "well, isn't feminism done?" i was surprised by this. i immediately said no and asked what he meant, he said that there was equality, and that was the point of feminism. i really was absolutely shocked to hear him say this. i mentioned a statistic from one of the articles, women make up about 52% of the population, museums show art that is made by women about 10-15% of the time. he just said, wow that sucks. and since that didnt seem to faze him, i said and what about the fact that in our government women probably hold 30% of the offices at most (i really dont know the exact amount, sorry!). he finally realized what i was talking about and only had to say that women were seen as equal under the law. i agreed and pointed out that a lot of people dont pay attention to the law.

so after all of that i really had a lot to think about. for the most part, at school, i surround myself by men that seem to be progressive and i would say possibly even feminist thinkers. this nick guy, i dont think hes chauvinist or misogynist, just sheltered (from a variety of types of feminism and types of women) and ignorant (about feminist theory or how people other than white middle class men get treated). it is completely strange and sad to hear a man that is close in age to me say that feminism is done. but maybe we just have different definitions of feminism. or maybe a lot of men feel the same and i live in my own little feminist world where all of the misogyny and patriarchy happens very very far away. i think i need to be having more conversations about women with my male friends.....

identity affiliations and gender performance

The readings for this week were about identity and how it is formed. Specifically in art history, identity is a way to understand the motivation behind the work. As in, if art was made by a woman, then she probably made it a certain way because she was a woman and had certain life experiences. In the history of art history, this reliance on the identity of the artist has created many parallel art histories. Women’s art history, African American art history, and others are looked at as separate happenings instead of being interconnected. Even as more emphasis was being put on certain categories of people, women, African American, homosexual, there were some that were resisting the labels of identity. They wanted to be more than just a homosexual artist, they wanted to be artists who happened to be homosexual, African American, and/or women.
In the article “Performative acts and Gender Constitution,” Judith butler attempts to define what gender is and isn’t. Gender is a series of repeated acts that both the actor and the audience believe. This belief that the series of acts equals a certain gender has been repeated throughout history and because of this repetition many people believe that gender is natural. That there are certain ways each gender should act according to their sex. The interesting thing about this is that when a person does not “perform” their gender according to social norms they are punished, which implies that deep down society knows that gender is NOT a natural concrete set of rules, because if it were than all behavior would be natural. I’m not sure how much of that makes sense, but it was pivotal to me (see image). I began to draw parallels between how art has been thought of and how that thought process has changed. Initially art was thought to have this innate meaning that was universally understood by all, no matter what context it was put in or who the viewer was. There are definitely still people who believe this, but many contemporary practitioners and historians have come to understand and accept that the meaning of a piece of art lies somewhere between the viewer, the art, and the context in which it’s seen. And from this weeks reading, that is very similar to how I understand gender, that we perform in certain ways, depending on where we are and who our audience is; our audience understands our gender because we are acting in accordance with societal context and we are dressed in a certain way.
Another facet to identity is ethnicity. David Hollinger argues for the idea of “post-ethnicity.” The reason that Hollinger feels there is a need for a new way to look at ethnic identity is because past methods have failed. Multiculturalism does not go far enough to include the diverse array of people and although it worked well when it was growing in the 1980s and 1990s, it has failed to be updated since then. Post-ethnicity takes the cosmopolitanism that was prevalent in multiculturalism and pairs it with the idea that identity is voluntary. We choose to be affiliated with certain groups, as opposed to have a concrete identity that just IS. Hollinger feels there are three main groups that are affecting Americans thoughts about ethnicity. The business elite who don’t care much about actual Americans because they do most of their business overseas, a group that sees themselves as trans-national and therefore do not care much about a national community, and the third group is the “middle Americans,” the Evangelical Christians who feel strongly about America but believe that it belongs only to the people that look like them (white, middle class, and straight). After reading this section I am left wondering how I fit into America. I don’t affiliate myself with any of the 3 constituencies that Hollinger outlines, I do feel that I would identify with the idea of post-ethnic. I have always hated the idea that a label was going to be chosen for me by an outside force, and this label might fit some aspects of my personality and the rest must be flukes because they don’t fit a certain way.

moar funny pictures