Meetings: Exhibitions of Women’s Art Curated by Izabella Gustowska

Ikonotheka ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 291-311
Author(s):  
Agata Jakubowska
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Community Or ◽  
Women's Art ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Interpretative Approach

In February of 1978 the exhibition Trzy kobiety. Ania Bednarczuk, Iza Gustowska, Krynia Piotrowska opened at the Bureau of Art Exhibitions in Poznań. It became a starting point for two cycles of exhibitions that have been organised practically until today: Odbicia (Gustowska’s and Piotrowska’s joint exhibitions) and Spotkania. The essay focuses on Spotkania, i.e. exhibitions at which Gustowska (initially with Piotrowska) presented the works of invited women artists. These exhibitions were Trzy kobiety (1978, Poznań), Sztuka kobiet (1980, Poznań), Spotkania – Obecność I (1987, Poznań), Spotkania – Obecność III (1992, Poznań), Presence IV – 6 Women (1994, Galeria La Coupole, Rennes) and Osiem dni tygodnia (2011, Szczecin). To consider them a cycle and to analyse them under the joint title of Spotkania is the author’s own interpretative approach based on the observation that, in their case, Izabella Gustowska’s actions comprise a consistent project based mainly on the recurrent gesture of creating an opportunity for women artists to meet – hence the word meetings – and to engage in a dialogue. Spotkania is the longest-lasting and most consistently carried out project enabling women artists to meet but, paradoxically, not intended to consolidate them. All of the exhibitions emphasised Gustowska’s certainty of essential closeness between women. This closeness was always characterised, very generally and indistinctly, as a kinship that becomes evident only when sought. An analysis of the exhibitions leads one to the conclusion that the combination of the conviction that women share essential similarities with an emphasis on their individuality and on the separateness of their artistic proposals, coupled with Gustowska’s distancing herself from feminism, are the reasons why Spotkania did not result in the emergence of any kind of community or in the undertaking of collective actions. The exhibitions remained as incidental meetings and their infl uence on the oeuvres of the women artists who participated in them is yet to be analysed.

Embroidery and Textiles: A Novel Perspective on Women Artists’ Art Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunanda Rani ◽  
◽  
Dong Jining ◽  
Dhaneshwar Shah ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Women's Art ◽  
Tools And Techniques

The manuscript focuses on the autobiographical artistic practice of women artists and feminist expression in visual art, particularly those women artists who use embroidery and textiles as mediums, techniques, processes, styles, subjects, and themes. Women artists often use a variety of unique materials and techniques to create artwork which are primarily related to them and show a feminist identity. The research explores the mediums, tools and techniques applied by women artists in their artworks and the reasons behind choosing that particular medium and methods. In addition, women artists when, where, and how these diverse creation strategies have been adopted and developed over time are examined and analysed with the help of earlier literature, articles, research papers, art exhibitions, and artworks created by women artists. This manuscript discusses the chronological development of embroidery and textiles in the context of women’s art practice, the efforts and achievements of the “Feminist Art Movement” and the cause and concept of “Entangled: Threads & Making”, a contemporary woman artist art exhibition at Turner. Embroidery and textiles are associated with women’s art practice; women artists used embroidery, needlework, and textiles as a powerful symbolic medium of expression and resistance against the male-dominated art society. They began to use feminist expressions, forms, and materials to present their new characteristics. Women artists use embroidery, textiles and needlework as feminist traditional materials and techniques, and continue to struggle to blend them with other new contemporary mediums.

scholarly journals How images are the making of the Women’s Art Library/Make

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Althea Greenan
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
The Core ◽  
Women's Art ◽  
Special Collection ◽  
Significant Research

When a group of women artists decided to organise their slides to inspire others to document themselves and raise the visibility of women’s art, they could not have known that several decades later those slides would still be together, forming the core of an internationally significant research resource. How did this idea of gathering together images transform a women’s art group – in the 1980s these were almost as common as book groups are today – into the Women’s Art Library/Make collection? Historically rooted in gender politics and the subsequent emergence of a radicalised women’s art practice and feminist art criticism, WAL/Make is an exciting ‘work in progress’. Now based in Goldsmiths, University of London it is being developed as a key special collection by the Library.

Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist*

1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary D. Garrard
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sofonisba Anguissola ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Art And Society

An Unusual Portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola has gained new prominence from its illustration in color in a recent publication. In her Women, Art, and Society (1990), Whitney Chadwick claims of the portrait in question, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (fig. 1), that in presenting herself in the guise of a portrait being painted by her teacher, Anguissola produced “the first historical example of the woman artist consciously collapsing the subject-object position.” Chadwick's succinct observation opens up the possibility of understanding the painting in a new way, for she points to the peculiar conflation of subject and object that uniquely befell women artists in the Renaissance and complicates their art, especially their self-portraits. From this starting point, I will here explore the form of self-presentation offered by Anguissola in the Siena portrait and several other works in the context of what was a fundamental problem for the Renaissance female artist: the differentiation of herself as artist (the subject position) from her self as trope and theme for the male artist (the object position).

scholarly journals Sisterhood as strategy : the collaborations of American women artists in the gilded age

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kelsey Frady Malone
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
Art World ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
The People ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Historical Moment

This dissertation employs four case studies--illustrator Alice Barber Stephens in Philadelphia; Louisville-born sculptor Enid Yandell; photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston in Washington, D.C.; and the Newcomb College Pottery in New Orleans--to show how individual women artists from a variety of media utilized collaborative strategies to advance their professional careers. These strategies included mentoring, teaching, and sharing commissions with one another; establishing art organizations; sharing studio and living spaces; organizing and participating in all-female art exhibitions; and starting businesses to market their work. At a historical moment when expectations and ideas towards gender roles and feminine performance were shifting, these women artists negotiated these changes as well as those of a fine art world that was redefining itself in an increasingly consumer-based culture that challenged traditional definitions of the "professional" artist. "Sisterhood as Strategy" intersects with important work in the fields of American History, Women's and Gender Studies, and Art History. It bridges a gap between broad, cultural histories of women's artistic production and more focused scholarly studies on women's labor and organized womanhood. Indeed, this dissertation brings more specificity to these areas by focusing on particular artists who were highly acclaimed during their lifetime but who have since fallen through the cracks of the art historical canon and by attending to the wide array of genres and media that all artists, men and women, worked with during the era: illustration, photography, public sculpture, and the decorative arts. By analyzing the art produced as a result of collaboration; the artists' letters, photographs, and personal papers; and contemporary mass media, particularly art journals and popular ladies' magazines, this dissertation recovers the voices of artists who served as professional role models and creates a far more diverse picture of the people and art forms that constituted early modern American visual culture.

Defending Ways of Life

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 211-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
International Community ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Community Or ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
President Bush ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
At Home

This article explores the rhetorics of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair in the aftermath of 11th September. It takes their differing versions of masculinity as a starting-point. The speeches refer extensively to `ways of life', a concept also worth recovering theoretically. Anti-terrorism is a defence of ways of living which are without moral ambiguity and are in absolute opposition to terrorist `evil'. Bush constructs a hegemony at home as a basis for unilateral global interventions. His Americanism draws on familiar themes (`freedom', patriotism, religion), but also invokes compassion, pugnacity and sporting masculinities, drawn especially from the game of baseball. Blair's more `intellectual' version aims at the construction of an international `community' or coalition with Britain in a pivotal role. The contexts, strengths, vulnerabilities, and political and ethical limits of anti-terrorism are explored in detail, including some correspondence with Al-Qa'ida's fundamentalism.

A Postmodern Public Man and His Mental-Cultural Markers

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-301
Author(s):  
Kazimierz Dziubka
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Somatic Marker ◽  
Complex Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Markers ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Somatic Marker Hypothesis ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Interpretative Approach

AbstractThe article aims to describe the fundamental principles of the postmodern concepts of public life viewed from the perspective of neuroscience and cognitive science. Considering the fact that both systems of theories are focused on the psychobiological aspects of human mind and body, and in consequence they both endeavor to understand and explain the relations between brain, mind, and social environment (sphere), I decided to use this particular assumption as a starting point to analyse categories such as: public man, public sphere, space of life, modern and postmodern normative patterns, and heuristic paradigms of relationships between Nature, Society, and Culture. As a leading cognitive and interpretative approach I selected the theory of mental and cultural markers, based on somatic marker hypothesis presented by Antonio R. Damasio and the first-person ontology developed by John R. Searle. Ultimately, both concepts support a more extensive and complex approach in explaining direction of contemporary public debate and associated with it expectations to reorganize people’s life in terms of their physical and spiritual needs. The crucial role of the aforementioned changes has the embodied self – a source of unique and everyday experiences that stimulate the thoughts and emotions of men.

scholarly journals Constituting the 'Woman Artist': A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand's Art History 1928 - 1989

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsty Baker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Art History ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Representations Of Women

<p>This thesis considers the ways in which the figure of the ‘woman artist’ has been constituted in published sources in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history, between 1928 and 1989. Most of the texts dedicated specifically to women artists in this country were written in the latter half of the twentieth century, and were produced with the intention of writing women artists back in to the histories from which they had been excluded. This thesis operates from a different perspective. Rather than assuming a starting point of women’s absence from a national art history, it traces instead those written representations of the ‘woman artist’ as they exist in the published literature. Through the construction of a genealogy of such representation, this thesis examines the ideologies which are both embedded in, and perpetuated by them. In doing so it makes evident and interrogates the gendered power dynamics which have shaped the writing of Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.   This thesis is structured chronologically, charting the formation and expansion of a coherent national arts discourse against shifting notions of national and cultural identity. The trajectory of this discourse was shaped by a canonical impulse, constructing an unfolding narrative which centres upon a succession of key artistic figures. This thesis argues that the structuring of this – largely male, Pākehā – narrative, acted to subsume gendered difference, rendering women increasingly peripheral within its pages. The model of subsumed difference is also apparent in feminist critiques of this dominant art history, which are critically interrogated in the latter half of this thesis. As women sought to challenge the relative exclusion of women artists from this dominant narrative, they also perpetuated their own exclusions, often in terms of culture or sexuality.   Through discursive analysis of both ‘mainstream’ art history, and the feminist writings which addressed it, this thesis presents two significant arguments. First, that stereotypical representations of women artists play a structural role – to marginalise women – within Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. Secondly, that feminist interrogations of such histories failed to account for the multiplicity of women’s subjectivity. I conclude by instantiating and calling for an alternative approach that challenges the subsuming of such difference within a single, homogenous narrative. Such an approach will produce histories that interrogate, rather than perpetuate, the gendered and cultural power dynamics embedded within society.</p>

scholarly journals Constituting the 'Woman Artist': A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand's Art History 1928 - 1989

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsty Baker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Art History ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Representations Of Women

<p>This thesis considers the ways in which the figure of the ‘woman artist’ has been constituted in published sources in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history, between 1928 and 1989. Most of the texts dedicated specifically to women artists in this country were written in the latter half of the twentieth century, and were produced with the intention of writing women artists back in to the histories from which they had been excluded. This thesis operates from a different perspective. Rather than assuming a starting point of women’s absence from a national art history, it traces instead those written representations of the ‘woman artist’ as they exist in the published literature. Through the construction of a genealogy of such representation, this thesis examines the ideologies which are both embedded in, and perpetuated by them. In doing so it makes evident and interrogates the gendered power dynamics which have shaped the writing of Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.   This thesis is structured chronologically, charting the formation and expansion of a coherent national arts discourse against shifting notions of national and cultural identity. The trajectory of this discourse was shaped by a canonical impulse, constructing an unfolding narrative which centres upon a succession of key artistic figures. This thesis argues that the structuring of this – largely male, Pākehā – narrative, acted to subsume gendered difference, rendering women increasingly peripheral within its pages. The model of subsumed difference is also apparent in feminist critiques of this dominant art history, which are critically interrogated in the latter half of this thesis. As women sought to challenge the relative exclusion of women artists from this dominant narrative, they also perpetuated their own exclusions, often in terms of culture or sexuality.   Through discursive analysis of both ‘mainstream’ art history, and the feminist writings which addressed it, this thesis presents two significant arguments. First, that stereotypical representations of women artists play a structural role – to marginalise women – within Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. Secondly, that feminist interrogations of such histories failed to account for the multiplicity of women’s subjectivity. I conclude by instantiating and calling for an alternative approach that challenges the subsuming of such difference within a single, homogenous narrative. Such an approach will produce histories that interrogate, rather than perpetuate, the gendered and cultural power dynamics embedded within society.</p>

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