Feminist artists often adopted alternative materials that were related to the feminine gender to create their works, such as textiles or other media in the past. Feminist art is an art category associated with the feminist movement of the late sixties and seventies. Feminist art highlights the social and political differences that women experience in their lives. The goal of this art form is to bring positive and comprehensive change to the world, leading to equality or liberation. The media used range from traditional art forms, such as painting, to more unorthodox methods, such as performing art, conceptual art, body art, craftsmanship, video, film and fiber art.
Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force to broaden the definition of art by incorporating new media and a new perspective. Feminist art represents a meeting point between feminism and art. Although works of art focused on the female experience in the world existed before the feminist art movement began, during the 1970s feminist art was defined and articulated. The feminist art movement also represents a field in which activism and art flourished together.
In the 1980s, the famous art critic Lucy R. Lippard said that feminist art should not be seen as either a style or a movement, but rather as a value system and a way of life. In 1973, Chicago, together with graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Raven, created the Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW), a two-year program for women in the arts that covered feminist practice in the studio, as well as theory and criticism. In 1972, the artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who co-founded the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts, organized the Womanhouse project, which encompassed an entire property in Los Angeles to which several female artists contributed on-site installations. Later, Chicago and Miriam Shapiro created the Feminist Art Program (FAP) at the California Institute of the Arts.
The feminist art movement aspired to reconfigure long-standing sociocultural perspectives through art, thus expelling prejudice and establishing a new dialogue about the female experience. For more information and resources, visit the Feminist Art Coalition and the Feminist Art Collective. Perhaps the most recognizable feminist art collection is that of the Guerrilla Girls, since their media approach to making art and their informative content provide an explicit and easily accessible meaning. The Womanhouse installation encompassed an entire Hollywood residential house organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro as the culmination of the Feminist Art Program (FAP) of the California Institute of the Arts in 1972. Feminist art supports this statement because art began to challenge previously conceived notions about women's roles.
Although they came to light and were incorporated into the lexicon of academic art at the end of the 20th century, feminist art and criticism go far beyond the reach of those decades and continue to evolve the debate on equality, perception and progress. Along with Miriam Schapiro, Chicago created the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts in 1971. This image, which addresses the role of religious and historical iconography of art in the subordination of women, became one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement. Artists Faith Wilding and Harmony Hammond, among others, used fabrics in their works to question the elimination of female craftsmanship from the arts. Inspired by the social changes of the sixties, feminist art began as a movement that connected activism, social policy and art.
