Renaissance Women Were Artists, Poets, Musicians and Scholars

The rise in women artists during the Renaissance period was due to a major cultural shift. Female artists gained international reputations during this era.

A shift towards humanism, a philosophy affirming dignity for all people, which was central to Renaissance thinking and assisted in raising the status of women. 

 

During the Renaissance there were stories of allegorical cities where independent women lived free from slander of men. Real women artists were included in these stories and some texts led to increased education for women. Popular works stated men and women should be educated in the social arts, which made it acceptable for women to engage in visual, musical and literary arts.

Many female artists depicted themselves in self-portraits not just as painters, but as musicians and scholars, thereby highlighting their well-rounded education.

With the rise of humanism there was a shift from craftsmen to artists. Artists, unlike earlier craftsmen were expected have a viewpoint and be educated in mathematics, ancient art and the human body.

In the late Renaissance the artist’s training began to shift from the master’s workshop to the academy; this began a long struggle for women to continue to have access to education and training as artists until the late 19^th century.

It was essential for an artist’s to study the human body and this required working from male nudes and corpses. Women were usually barred from this training; therefore they were excluded from creating scenes that were required for the large-scale religious compositions, which received the most prestigious commissions.

Usually the few women who experienced small success as artists during the 15^th and 16^th century were nuns or children of painters, which permitted them to gain training from their fathers workshop. 

To see the Seated Woman I art print by Lanie Loreth click on image:

Seated Woman I PREMIUM GRADE Rolled CANVAS Art Print Lanie Loreth 12x12

Medieval Period Documented Women Artists

Clearly demonstrated examples of women at work in the arts during the medieval period are documented in the manuscript illuminations, embroideries, jewelry, carved capitals, and other forms of art created during this historical period. Women also worked as brewers, butchers, wool merchants and ironmongers (metal merchants). 

Female artist during this era were from a small subset of society, whose status permitted them freedom from more strenuous types of work. These women artists were often from two literate classes, either wealthy aristocrats or nuns. Nuns often created embroideries and textiles.

Women have been creating jewelry from seashells, stones, found items, semi-precious stones, precious stones, metals and other materials for more than 100,000 years.

Isn’t interesting women have been creating art since the beginning of time just as men have and yet most female artist are not acknowledged as professional artists. Why is this???

To see a Norma Jean design click on image: 

Festive Bead Necklace with Orange Quartz Diamond Shaped Stone

Women in Art

Women have been involved in creating art since the beginning of time despite the difficulties experienced in receiving training, trading their work and gaining recognition.

The best period for women artists was during the Middle Ages. It was later introduction of drawing from life models that made it harder for women to obtain specialized training, which became a requirement to be known as a professional artist due to reasons of decorum.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, historians have made an effort to rediscover the artistic accomplishments of women and give female artists their due place in narrative of art history.

There are no records of who the artists of the prehistoric eras were, but studies of many early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists show that women were often the principal artisans in the cultures considered as Neolithic and Paleolithic, creating pottery, textiles, cave paintings, baskets, jewelry and music. Collaboration on large projects by women during these eras was common.

To see a Minoan Snake Goddess click on image:

Minoan Snake Goddess Statue from Knossos Palace

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe, An American Artist

Georgia O’Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) is a prominent artist in American Art; she received recognition for her technical contributions and she challenged the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is primarily known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes that are powerful abstract images.

O’Keeffe played a significant role in bringing an American art style to Europe during a time when Europeans dominated art. This accomplishment improved her art-historical importance because she was one of few women to gain entry into this level of professional influence.

Anita Pollitzer took some of Georgia O’Keeffe’s drawings to New York in 1916 and showed them to photographer Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 gallery. Stieglitz said O’Keefee’s drawings were the “purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while”. As a result, he chose to exhibit ten of O’Keeffe’s drawings in April 1916. O’Keeffe had not been consulted prior to the exhibit and found out about it through an acquaintance; she confronted Stieglitz and agreed to let her drawings hang. This became Georgia O’Keeffe’s first solo show.

In 1924 Alfred Stieglitz began organizing annual exhibits of O’Keeffe’s work and by the mid 1920’s, Georgia O’Keeffe had become one of America’s most important artists. In 1928 six of her calla lily paintings sold for $25,000 US dollars, which was the largest sum ever paid for a group of painting by a living American Artist.

 “Black Iris III” (1926) evoked a veiled representation of female genitalia. Georgia O’Keeffe denied painting vaginal imagery, but many well-known art historians have linked her work to the feminist artists of the 1970’s. Judy Chicago gave O’Keeffe a prominent place in her “The Dinner Party”.


To see Red Canna Art Poster by Georgia O'Keeffe click on image:
Red Canna Botanical Art Poster Print by Georgia O'keeffe, 23x34

The Guerrilla Girls, Radical Feminist Artists

In 1985 a group of women artists attended an exhibit titled, “An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture”, held by the Modern Museum of Art in New York. These women noticed only 13 of the 169 featured artist were women and the ratio of artists of color was even smaller, none of whom were women artists either. The Guerrilla Girls were established following the attendance of this exhibit.

As an anonymous group of radical feminist artists who wear gorilla masks in public and take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms, the Guerrilla Girls expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture with facts, humor and outrageous visuals. Supporters have circulated their work around the world.

Trained as visual artists, the Guerrilla Girls first work was putting up posters throughout New York City criticizing the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in galleries and museums.

To continue their use of provocative text, visuals and humor in the service of feminism and social change two founding members of the Guerrilla Girls established the website www.guerrillagirls.com.

The Guerrilla Girls travel the world talking about the issues of sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture and their 25 years as masked avengers, reinventing the “f” word in the 21^st century. They are part of Amnesty International’s Violence Against Women Campaign in the UK and brainstorm with Greenpeace. The Guerrilla Girls could be anywhere and are everywhere.

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Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls

Faith Wilding, Feminist Performer

Faith Wilding is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator who immigrated to the United States from Paraguay in 1961. She is a founding member of the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, CA where she received her MFA in 1973. Wilding also holds a BA in Comparative Literature, which she obtained from the University of Iowa.

“By Our Own Hands” (1976) is a chronicle by Faith Wilding of her work and experience within the feminist art movement in Southern California.

SubRosa was co-founded by Wilding and is a cyberfeminist cell of cultural produces who utilize BioArt and tactical performance in the public arena to explore and critique the intersections of information and biotechnologies within women’s bodies, lives and work. Faith wilding continues to work with subRosa.

For more than 30 years Faith Wilding has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the world and is widely recognized for her work. Wilding’s art addresses the recombinant and distributed biotech body in various media including 2-D, video, digital media, installations and performances. 

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A Studio of Their Own: The Legacy of the Fresno Feminist Experiment

Mary Kelly, Conceptual Art and Feminism

Mary Kelly originally trained as a painter. She studied in Florence, Italy with protégés of Giorgio Morandi where she learned traditional techniques, but her real interest was contemporary art. She relocated to London, England in 1968 to continue her postgraduate study at St. Martin’s School of Art.

Simultaneously Kelly’s art career and her involvement with the Women’s Movement began in the 1970’s in London. She was active in grassroots media organizations and was also a member of a group of politically active women, who developed intellectual feminist theories of sexuality and representation.

In 1971 Mary Kelly went to see Othon at the National Film Theater, where she saw the way directors Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub ran the whole reel on a one shot going into Rome. She knew this was what she wanted to do, not just film, but also with installation as a series of stills.

 Her first experience of working on a film was the making of Nightcleaners (1970-1975), an experimental film made by the members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan). This film is a documentary that recorded the campaign to unionize the women who worked at night cleaning office blocks and who were being victimized and underpaid.

Kelly exhibited the first of a three part series titled, “Post Partum Document” (1973-1979) at the ICA in London in 1976. This epic series explores the artist’s relationship with her infant son through the combination of text, images and found objects. The installation includes her son’s stained nappy liners, which was considered scandalous at that time by the tabloid press, but in fact was meant to challenge the Conceptual art establishment and was also pivotal to the late twentieth century feminism movement. As a result Mary Kelly became a prominent American woman artist and is among the most influential feminist artists working today.

She is known for her project-based work addressing questions of sexuality and identity in the form of large-scale narrative installations. For more than three decades Kelly has received worldwide attention on her richly textured narratives and images.  

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Post-Partum Document