FEMINISM WEEK
Miss Representation
WAR Women Art Revolution
I think this was my favorite week from seminar. Linda Nochlins Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists has always been one of my favorite essays. It points to a multitude of reasons as to why we have yet to have a truly great female artist. Things like social class, how artist fathers would help there sons from a young age, and also how women are more inward thinking in there art, and how for some reason society views that as being lesser. Recently however I've been working on an essay for my 19th century art history class that disproves a lot of what Nochlin is saying. These advantages she says male artist had are not really universal and in addition Nochlin writes about how art historians now pick women out of the woodwork to talk about. This is also not the case a lot of the time, many well known women artists were actually respected and had great renown in their lives but then were ignored by art history.
My Favorite of the two films was definitely Miss Representation. Often as a women it is easy to feel like the odds are stacked against you. And also easy to feel like your making a mountain out of a mole hill. Miss Representation out the whole situation in easy to understand terms the motto of the film being "you can't be what you can't see". This is getting more and more media attention recently with all of the photoshopping scandals. However, the larger problem, that women are not seen in places of power in the media, and are often not even seen as anything less than fully beautiful. The part I found the most shocking was the section where random people outside MOMA if they could name 3 female artists. You just hear person after person go ".....Frida Khalo..... I don't know" it's sad! I think the situation for women artists is getting better and better but we still have a long way to go.
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