Feminist art

Feminist art is art made by women artists consciously in the context of the development of feminist theory from around 1970, and more broadly a tendency that questions the traditional, male-dominated understanding of art history. Its practitioners sought to make women's experience visible, to recover the forgotten names of women artists of the past, to reclaim the body, labour, domestic life and motherhood as valid artistic subjects, and to dismantle the hierarchy that dismissed so-called feminine crafts such as embroidery and textiles. A landmark figure was Judy Chicago, whose monumental installation The Dinner Party honours notable women throughout history; with Miriam Schapiro she founded an influential Feminist Art Program in California. Also important were the performances of Carolee Schneemann, the conceptual work of Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman's photographic investigations of identity, and the collective actions of the Guerrilla Girls, who exposed gender inequality in museums. Linda Nochlin's essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? provided a theoretical spur. Feminist art radically expanded ideas about who makes art, what it is about, and who has the right to write its history.