Post 4.

 Cindy Sherman -
     Cindy Sherman is a artist based on today. Cindy Sherman is best known for her portraits and her play roles in different films. She is best known for her complete untitled films. She dressed her self in to different characters. Mostly, Cindy Sherman play roles were in black and white. Cindy Sherman would play mostly sexual roles or sexual assault based roles.

Sherrie Levine
      Sherrie Levine was a photographer, painter and a artist. Most of Sherrie Levine work was famous specially after she did the renowned photography picture name "After The Walkers", Sherrie Levine work was mostly under a copy or renowned a picture of another photographer who never gave in a full ownership[ of their work and re-owning someone work made her really famous.

Judy Chicago
    Judy Chicago is a very famous feminist artist. She is known for her creation of her art piece towards gender, sexuality and race. Judy Chicago did a lot of famous art piece around name "The Dinner Party" which collaborated the work of more than 400 people. While her dinner party set pieces representing a feminist work and gave support for feminist to speak for their rights. Her famous art piece is displayed in the Brooklyn museum.

Yoko Ono
      Yoko Ono is a Japanese self owned artist. Basically, Yoko Ono act out difference performance in so many different ways for different reasons. Also, Yoko Ono did is a filmmaking artist and a singer. Yoko Ono performance been so eye opening for people because of her tolerance towards a limit. She is known for so many multi acting things.

Sophie Calle
      Sophie Calle is a artist, writer, and photographer. Sophie Calle did an experiment with her self that she hired someone just to follow her. Like he self owned detective. Sophie Calle was famous for her painting called "Ghosts" and further more.
   

Top 5

            Thanks to the avant-garde female artists of America, we have made strides towards reaching gender equality and expressing the depth of social and political issues embedded in being a female and female artist. Female artists created new and uncommon forms of art that grasped the attention of societal masses. The contemporary movement, including many forms of avant-garde art, was a period of time for the mid 1900’s to the present. It was “[m]odeled on the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960’s[.] [T]he contemporary feminist movement in the arts emphasized political activism, group collaboration and an art practice centered around the personal and collective experiences of women” (Chadwick 8).  Feminists in this period took an introspective approach into discovering what exactly it was about the relationship between the genders that deemed women’s artwork and artist’s inferior to men and granted them little to no credit. These prolific and tenacious female artists included the likes of performance artists such as: Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper and conceptual artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger who’s impact on the contemporary art and feminist movement we will further discuss in this post.

            Marina Abramovic, perhaps gone too soon, dead at the age of 67 in the year of 2013, was often considered the mother of performance art. Abramovic’s performance art frequently involved her injuring herself while testing the precincts of the relationship between the artist/performer (herself) and the audience. Her “Rhythm” series was a of performances that were monumental in her career. “Rhythm 0 (1974)” of this series was one which I thought was profound. In this performance, Abramovic wanted to test her audience by seeing how aggressive and how vulnerably they would treat her if there were no restrictions or consequences. Abramovic stood idol in front of an audience who she allowed to do anything to anything to by utilizing 72 tools including many that could harm her. By the end of the performance she was cut many times, stripped and treated in a sexually aggressive manner by many men. She was able to expose the violent nature of how many men view women. Marina speaks about her experience in being the subject of her performance and the courage it took her in retrospect in this video below.

            Yoko Ono is another courageous performance artist of the contemporary period who’s work was able to expose the flawed nature of how men viewed women. In her performance “Cut Piece” (1964) Yoko allowed her audience to cut her clothes off with a pair of scissors in order to test their ability to respect her boundaries as a woman. Unfortunately, many men began to rip her clothes apart and got frustrated when articles of clothing were difficult to rip. They viewed Yoko as a sexual object rather than an individual and even went on to cut her bra off. Their aggressive and degrading acts in this performance made a large issue deeply rooted in society visible. Yoko Ono’s performance can be watched below.

            Female performance artists also incorporated the exploration of racial issues into their exploration of gender; they explored identity as a whole. Adrian Piper is an artist who has accomplished this feat. In her performance “They Mythic Being”, performed in intervals between 1973 to 1975, she poses as a black, working class man. She wears an afro, a mustache and male attire while walking through the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York City. She attempts to discover the social implications that come with being an African American male and also ogle’s women in order to get a first-hand understanding of how many of these women feel and react. Adrian Piper explains “The idea is very much to see what would happen if there was a being who had exactly my history only a completely different visual appearance to the rest of society” .

            Conceptual art emerged with the contemporary movement, in which the idea and meaning behind the art is valued more than the finished product itself. Jenny Holzer’s work embodied conceptual art, specifically her piece “Truism” written in a series between 1978 and 1987. In these “Truisms” she expressed maxims, short but thoughtful sentences that allow the audience reflect deeply. Through these maxims, she addresses issues of sex, race, class and a wide range of topics and hopes to engage her audience and receive a wide variety of responses. In one of her truisms, she writes “A rapist died because he left his victim wishing she was dead”. An ambivalent, yet thought provoking statement about a prominent issue of gender and male dominance. Here is an excerpt of one her truisms.

            Barbara Kruger, a well known contemporary artist native to Newark and born in 1954, directly addresses feminist issues through conceptual art. Barbara Kruger utilizes the medium of magazine-like strips of text and black and white photographs. She places the text over the images and creates a poster that can be placed in areas of high traffic in a manner similar to advertisments. In her Untitled piece of 1981, she places a female statue with her face to the side and places “Your gaze hits the side of my face on it’s side”. She shows how the male gaze makes women feel like trapped and not an individual but a sexually appealing object through the placement of the female statue.

Works Cited

Reisman, Sara. “The Intersectional Self.” The 8th Floor, 18 Feb. 2017,

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. 4th Edition. 2007

Name 5 Female Contemporary Artists

Louise Bourgeois: 1911-2010

Louise is a contemporary female artist whom we have been fortunate enough to learn about it class. Her art consists of surrealism, the body, installations and more. She is an artist that we believe today who has influenced female artists and feminist art practices. Her artwork is often explicit but has relevant and important meaning behind each piece whether it is sexual or of some odd shape. As stated in The Art Story and similarly in class, “Bourgeois transformed her experiences into a highly personal visual language through the use of mythological and archetypal imagery, adopting objects such as spirals, spiders, cages, medical tools, and sewn appendages to symbolize the feminine psyche, beauty, and psychological pain” (The Art Story, Modern Art Insight, 2018). In example, the piece in which we saw in class, “Fillette” – 1968: this is an example of a type of body art piece which can be interpreted in different ways. One of which being a distorted looking erect penis and testicles and the other being a long neck with breasts. The title translates in English to “little girl” which I still cannot fully grasp the meaning, however, according to the same source used previously, “…the work suggests a girl metamorphosed into that which threatens her” (The Art Story, 2018).

Lousie Bourgeois, "Fillette", 1968

Yoko Ono: 1933 – Present

            Yoko is a contemporary artist who is well known for her music and her performance art. She is Japanese – American. I previously only knew her as John Lennon’s wife and as a musician. I was pleasantly surprised to learn of her in class as a performance artist. I really enjoyed learning about her and found her performance art to be incredibly unique due to how raw it was because it often lacked control ( I mean that in a good way, though).  She said it best herself, “What I am trying to do is make something happen by throwing a pebble into the water and creating ripples… I don’t want to control the ripples” (Yoko Ono).  Some of her performance art was correlated with Dada. One obvious piece that represented both feminism and the female body was, “Cut Piece” – 1964. This was unique because she allowed the audience to have control and cut pieces of her clothing off, exposing her to real and raw emptions of whether or not she felt objectified or uncomfortable or not.

Yoko Ono, "Cut Piece", 1964

Doris Salcedo: 1958 – Present

            Doris is a contemporary artist whom we have learned about in class and is well known for her sculpture work. She is a female artist who portrays the idea of history and politics well (something that most do not take seriously from women). However, she does it confidently and with true meaning. For example, her Istanbul piece – here she is trying to show the connection between war and politics and how it is a large part of our everyday lives.  She expresses that war and politics and hardships is something that we are ALL experiencing – in which makes us all equal in some way. Attached is a link to a video which describes this piece and her goal/message behind it.

Doris Salcedo, "Untitled", 2003

Marina Abramovic; 1946 – Present

            Marina is another contemporary female artist who makes performance art. Her goal is to connect with audiences more rather than have them just stare at a piece of artwork. She focuses on the body, more specifically the female body being that she and her is a subject in some of her pieces. She represents pain and hardships by literally involving herself in performance pieces in which she puts herself at risk of getting hurt or harmed in some way. According to The Art Story, “We might interpret her work as having displaced art from traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and moved it directly on to her body. Yet far from conceiving it as simply a surface, she has said that she thinks of the body as the "point of departure for any spiritual development” (The Art Story - Modern Art Insight, 2018). An example of a piece is, “Rhythm 0” – 1974. Here she allows the audience to interact with her and gives them the option of using a plethora of objects on her body in any way they would like. She felt this piece was important in representing that we can confront pain (especially unique being that she is a woman – going against the stereotype that women are weak and cannot handle physical nor emotional pain). Some wanted to see her in pain, others wanted to relieve her pain. Objects used: pen, gun, band –aids, etc.

Marina Abramovic, "Rhythm 0", 1974

Rachel Whiteread: 1963 – Present

            Rachel is another contemporary female artist whom works on modern sculptures as one of her styles. She is significant in my opinion because she is the first woman to win a Turner Prize – although not really feminist – it was a contribution to female artists and their path to only go up. For example, “House” – 1993. The Art Story explains it well,  “ Whiteread's piece was remarkable for its wealth of associations, which were personal, political and social. Untitled (House) forced the viewer into an uncomfortable relation with architecture; by turning the house apparently inside out, the viewer is psychologically placed both inside and outside the building, evoking simultaneous feelings of inclusion and marginalization” (The Art Story, 2018).

Rachel Whiteread, "Untitled" (House), 1993

Works Cited

The Art Story - Modern Art Insight, 2018

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-bourgeois-louise.htm 

^ Use this site to type in the other Artist's names (in the search box - top right) in which I sited this source when talking about them 

https://art21.org/watch/extended-play/doris-salcedo-istanbul-short/ 

^ Video for Doris Salcedo

Five Female Artists

Contemporary art is considered as art produced in the 20^thor 21^stcentury. This art is a combination of different materials, methods, concepts, and subjects. It is common for artists during this era to work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. The term is specifically referenced to art made and produced by artists that are living today. It is mentioned that contemporary artists usually reflect and comment on modern day society. They also are known to question traditional ideas of how art has been defined or what constitutes it. Since the early 20^thcentury, many artists have chosen to turn away from “realistic representation” and have converted to abstraction. Recently contemporary artists have been working within the postmodern movement and have rejected the concept of mainstream art.

Judy Chicago: 

The Dinner Party, was an important icon of 1970s feminist art movement. This was also a  milestone in twentieth-century art. The Dinner Party is staged as a ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings. Each place setting is an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates. The names of another 999 women are written in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This exhibition honors the 1,038 women that have influenced feminism over the years. 

The Dinner Party, By Judy Chicago 1974-79

Frida Khalo: 

Frida Kahlo began to paint in 1925, while recovering from a near-fatal bus accident. She executed paintings that portrayed her hardships. By exploring, questioning, and staging herself and identity she also often evoked her ongoing struggle. Many of her paintings were displayed through the physical pain and the emotional distress caused by her relationship with another painter by the name of Diego Rivera.

The Broken Column, By Frida Khalo 1944

Mickalene Thomas: 

Mickalene  Thomas was a New Jersey native that made paintings, collages, photography, video, and installations that draw on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision. Through female sexuality, beauty, and power she constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors in order to examine how identity and gender are related to the ways women are represented in art and popular culture. In addition, the Rhinestones in her paintings are used to symbolize feminism. She uses this to confront her audiences assumptions about feminism. 

A Little Taste Outside of Love, 2007 

Louise Burgeouis: 

Louise Bourgeois's work during the 20^th century was influenced by the traumatic events she endured during her childhood. Bourgeois's often used sexually explicit subject matter and her focus on three-dimensional form was unusual for women artists at this time. Beginning in the 1970s, she hosted Sunday salons in her Chelsea apartment. This is where students and young artists would take their work to be critiqued by Bourgeois. Her influence has also had an impact on other artists feminist-inspired body art and in the development of installation art.

Arch of Hysteria, By Louise Bourgeois 1993 

Adrian Piper

Piper’s transformative work has shaped conceptual art since the 1960’s. She influenced many of the pronoun artists today. Piper was known to investigate the political, social, and spiritual potential of conceptual work. This frequently addressed gender, race, and xenophobia. 

Decide Who You Are, By Adrian Piper 1992

http://www.judychicago.com/gallery/the-dinner-party/dp-artwork/

https://www.fridakahlo.org/the-broken-column.jsp

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/mickalene-thomas-a-little-taste-outside-of-love-1

https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/42/681

https://artblart.com/tag/adrian-piper-decide-who-you-are/