Ayo Haruna

Can you name 5 women Artist?

    I took this Art and women class simply because I just needed an art class to fulfill my requirement. At first I struggled with what class I was going to take because I saw myself as someone that lacked artistic talent and there was no way I could take a painting class or any other art class. I have learned so much about art in this past months, I have learned so much about women art as well, which is why it would have been great for me to have visited the Brooklyn museum with the class but I could not because of my conference in San Francisco. I also tried making efforts to go this past weekend but exams and work schedule didn’t make it possible.

Scrolling through the Brooklyn Museum website, I saw many female artist that I have learned about this past months. Judy Chicago, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Khalo. The image I spent time looking at the most is Judy Chicago’s installation The Dinner Party.  We talked about it in class and I instantly recognized it .  The Dinner party is widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork, it functions as a symbolic history of women in Western civilization. here are 39 elaborate place settings arranged along a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Judy Chicago is an American Feminist artist who played a huge role in women's history and culture. She also founded the first feminist art program in the United States. She believed that all people including women should have equal rights and should be treated fairly. She started working on her massive multimedia project, The Dinner Party is considered her best work. 

My favorite female artist would be Harriet Powers mainly because her story is fascinating to me. In a time where blacks were slaves, where people of color couldn’t read or write- here was a woman who created pictorial quilt from memory and stories she has heard. She was an African American slave born in 1837. Her and her husband, Armstead, freed slaves who farmed a couple acres in rural Georgia, in 1890 (Guerilla Girls, 54). she memorized sermons and Bible stories in church along with folktales. Harriet told stories with her quilt, it’s one of my favorite work of art. She even used patterns from her African roots which I find more remarkable for someone who could not read or write.
Only two of her quilts are known to have survived: Bible Quilt 1886 and Pictorial Quilt 1898. Her quilts are considered among the finest examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting. Her work is on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

Frida khalo is probably the most famous women artist among young individuals. I say this because my project involved me carrying a video camera and asking people to name women artist.. While many failed, the name most people remember is Frida Khalo. Frida Khalo was born in Coyoacan, Mexico City, in 1907.She was a victim of a horrible accident which changed her life entirely. Frida was different in the sense that she was carefree and she challenged the norms of her time which was remarkable. Her paintings illustrated her life story - her love story with her beloved Diego and the pain she felt from not being able to have a child and from the accident that changed her life. Most of Frida’s paintings were portraits that gave audience a glimpse into her life and what she was feeling or going through at that moment in time.

Betye Saar brought attention to imagery of African Americans in media.  Bettye Saar is one of the women fierce women artist we talked about extensively in class. We talked about how she was a huge influence in challenging the norm and the depiction of African American women during this time.

Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, challenging myths and stereotypes. In the 1990s, her work was politicized while she continued to challenge the negative ideas of African-Americans. One of her better-known and controversial pieces is The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, depicting a "mammy" doll carrying a broom in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and placed in front of the syrup labels. Her work began with found objects arranged in boxes or windows. The items would reflect her mixed ancestry.

Saar's work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima makes a political statement by dealing with "white culture's stereotypical images of blacks." (Chadwick, 342). Mrs. Saar takes the image of the "mammy" which had been glorified in movies and elevated to a status of iconic imagery.  Although, Mammy was not a real African nor African American person the image was solidified in the American psyche, that all Black women were the nurturers of White America.  The image then transformed into the Aunt Jemima.  Aunt Jemima is best known as the character on pancake syrup.  These images were reinforced by blockbuster movies like Gone With the Wind, 1939 and Imitation of Life, 1934. These images were off shoots of our former slave selves.  They were purposefully de-sexed, happy being maids and those digesting these images were supposed to believe that they "were resolutely resigned to accepting their fate of inferiority." (Bogle, 59). Bettye Saar challenged this ideal  and broke down the image as not a positive one but one that had subjugated Black Women in media for more than 40 years. 

 

 The last but not the list would be Georgia Okeefe .  Georgia O’Keefe was born on November 15th, 1887 in Wisconsin. Her interest in painting began at an early age, and O’Keeffe completed her regular education and then went on to attend the Art Institute of Chicago. She spent several years working in Chicago as a commercial artist before traveling to Texas and becoming the the art supervisor of a public school in Amarillo. She moved to New York City to take art classes at Columbia University.  She is best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been recognized as the "Mother of American modernism. Her art was the first retrospective by a female artist to be shown at Museum of Modern Art. She also won numerous awards, including the Medal of Freedom, a Gold Medal of Painting, and the National Medal of Arts. 

 

Works Cited: 

Chadwick, Whitney. 2012. Women, Art, and Society. 4th ed. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson

Guerrilla Girls. 1998. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. NewYork, NY: Penguin Books