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Feminist Art Movement

By britanyarias597890
  • Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child, c. 1944, Lithograph, 12 3/8 x 9 1/2 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child, c. 1944, Lithograph, 12 3/8 x 9 1/2 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Catlett's Mother and Child (1944) depicts a woman and her baby embracing, looking as if it could have been carved from wood or stone. The subject of maternal love and protection is one repeated many times in both sculpture and prints. The pose of the subject immediately calls religious representations of Mary and the Christ child. Catlett wrote about her imagery in 1940: "The implications of motherhood, especially Negro mother hood, are quite important to me, as I am a Negro as well as a woman."
  • Elizabeth Catlett, I Have Always Worked Hard in America . . ., from "The Negro Woman" series, c. 1946, Linocut, 11 3/8 x 8 7/8 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Elizabeth Catlett, I Have Always Worked Hard in America . . ., from "The Negro Woman" series, c. 1946, Linocut, 11 3/8 x 8 7/8 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Catlett's I Have Always Worked Hard in America . . ., from “The Negro Woman” series (1946) shows three domestic workers cleaning; the worker in the foreground has particularly large hands that underscore her identity as a manual laborer. I Have Always Worked Hard in America is one in a set of fifteen prints entitled The Negro Woman which was a testament to the oppression, resistance, and survival of African American women. This impelling piece asserts women's value and historical importance.
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    Feminist Art

    The Feminist Art movement (1960-2025) emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s as a response to the underrepresentation and marginalization of women in the art world. Seeking to challenge traditional notions of gender, power, and sexuality; feminist artists questioned the male-dominated art history through explored themes related to the female experience. FAM is a call for equal rights, and greater visibility and agency for women artists in the art scene. The FAM includes all sort of mediums!
  • Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, c. 1974-1979, Ceramic, porcelain, textile; triangular table, 576 x 576 inches, The Brooklyn Museum, New York

    Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, c. 1974-1979, Ceramic, porcelain, textile; triangular table, 576 x 576 inches, The Brooklyn Museum, New York

    Chicago's The Dinner Party (1974-1979) comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of 39 place settings; each commemorating an important woman from history, including the names of another 999 women inscribed in gold on white tile floor beneath the triangular table. This work reclaimed the male-dominated art history and uses traditionally marginalized crafts (ex: ceramics and embroidery) to celebrate and assert the value of female contributions to culture.
  • Judy Chicago, Birth Project: Hatching the Universal Egg E5 Birth Power, c. 1983-1984, Embroidery over a drawing on silk (needle worker: Sandie Abel), 14.5 x 14.5 inches, St. Catherine University Fine Art Collection in St. Paul, Minnesota

    Judy Chicago, Birth Project: Hatching the Universal Egg E5 Birth Power, c. 1983-1984, Embroidery over a drawing on silk (needle worker: Sandie Abel), 14.5 x 14.5 inches, St. Catherine University Fine Art Collection in St. Paul, Minnesota

    Chicago's Birth Project: Hatching the Universal Egg E5 Birth Power (1983-1984) depicts a woman giving birth while a warm stream of light flows downwards from her open body as she releases her egg of life (the baby). The symmetrical composition of the woman's body along with the gentle flow of light from her womb is empowering. This beautiful piece fulfills birth-related art in Western culture, using embroidery as a powerful art form connected to art created by women over the course of history.
  • Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), c.1989, Photographic silkscreen on vinyl, 112 x 112 inches, The Broad, Los Angeles

    Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), c.1989, Photographic silkscreen on vinyl, 112 x 112 inches, The Broad, Los Angeles

    Kruger's Untitled (Your body is a battleground) (1989) showcases a woman's face disembodied; split in positive and negative exposures, and obscured by text marks stark a divide. The year 1989 was marked of protests against a new wave of antiabortion laws chipping away at the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. This piece was produced for the Women's March on Washington in support of reproductive freedom; simultaneously art and protest, its power lies in the timelessness of its declaration.
  • Barbara Kruger, "It's all about me, I mean you, I mean me," c. 2010, Photographic collage, Unknown, W Magazine, New York

    Barbara Kruger, "It's all about me, I mean you, I mean me," c. 2010, Photographic collage, Unknown, W Magazine, New York

    Kruger's "It's all about me, I mean you, I mean me" (2010) appropriates the body of nude celebrity Kim Kardashian and overlays three concise statements; confident assertion, contradiction, reassertion - white text (in Futura italic bold) encased in red text boxes. The text's decrease in size asserts the confidence of the female figure. The lack of punctuation conveys a cyclic uncertainty; reflective of female awareness (or lack thereof) in regard to their behaviors or self-representations.