Feminist Avant-Garde - 2/11/16

I went all the way down south into that LONDON to go see the exhibition ‘Feminist Avante Garde’ in the hopes that it would help me find/decide on pieces that I could for the ‘case studies’ in my dissertation and also get inspired. The exhibition was all 70’s and 80’s feminist art, and it was roughly divided into four sections; domestic agenda, normative beauty & the limits of the body, sexuality & objectification, and masquerade, parody& self-representation. I found a few pieces that really peaked my interest though I am unsure yet whether they will be relevant to my research project. I enjoyed the exhibition so much that I bought the book of it which has more in depth information about the pieces and the artists, I have had a skim of it and found a great bit of information about one of the images that caught my attention – so I’m pretty chuffed about that as it addressed the subject / object point of my project. 

Penny Slinger, ICU, Eye Sea You, I See You, 1973

"A big part of this was how female sexuality was viewed at that time. Frankly, there was not much understanding that women derived pleasure from sex. It was more seen as something women submitted to for the man 'Close your eyes and think of England'" - (Slinger in schor; psge 43)

"Female sexuality, usually reduced to a purely passive sight and site of exposure, is provided here with agency. As Slinger notes "By putting myself in the position of both the viewer and the viewed, I confounded the old subject-object dynamic and became the subject of my own art, my own sexual identity, not just an effect, not objectified through the eye of the male perceiver" " Page.43

I have been able to find out about a lot of artists and view their works and it was a really exciting exhibition for me to be able to go see. There were a few pieces of work that I enjoyed and I thought were relevent to my project but not as a case study.  Below is Martha Wilson's Breast Forms Permutated, 1972. The writing suggests that there are different ways breasts develop and the 'perfect' breast would be the middle image. This relates to my project as it suggests what is ideal beauty, while also showing other forms which are natural, commenting on ideals vs reality.

I don’t want to use all 70’s feminist art as examples, I would like to include some modern stuff but I’m also not really sure where to look for this. Should I include a burlesque act as a case study? Or just mention it in relation to the rest of the projects? I’d like to include a piece of ‘traditional’ modern illustration to try and explore whether female sexuality can be explored through illustration.