A Plethora of Feminist Art

The following is a plethora of different feminist art by various artists.



Jess Larson - Defensive (from the Look and Learn, Little Girl series) - circa 2009

Larson has an upcoming show at the Humanities Fine Arts Gallery at the University of Minnesota. The reception is Thursday January 21st, 2010 at 7 PM. The show runs until Friday March 12th, 2010.


Viktor Freso - Martina - 2007

Viktor Freso is male, but he's known for tackling interesting subjects. I especially like his "Onion is Healthy" time-based art piece from 2006 when he placed hundreds of onions outside a public building along with a sign saying "Onion is Healthy" and watched as hundreds of people stole the onions. Male feminist artists are not unheard of, check out the following interview with Charles Moffat.

Viktor's works will be in Chicago at the Open Concept Gallery until Feb. 25th, 2010.




Elke Krystufek - Proper Use - 2005

Elke Krystufek's series "Less Male Art" will be showing at the Kestner Gallery (kestnergesellschaft) until July 2nd 2010 in Hanover Germany.

Kirsten Justesen

FEMINIST ART - Kirsten Justesen was born in 1943. She currently lives and works in Copenhagen and New York. She studied at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen 1975.

Her activities comprise a wide range of genres, from body art and performance art, to sculptures and installation. Justesen was part of the avant-garde scene of the 1960s, where she became a pioneering figure within the three-dimensional modes of art that incorporate the artist's own body as artistic material. These experiments led her in the direction of the so-called feminist art which challenged traditional value systems during the 1970s. Her later works constitute broader investigations of relationships between body, space, and language.

Justesen has created a series of exhibitions, events, museum installations, performances, and mural work in Denmark and the rest of world since the mid-60s. And received number of awards including a life-long grant from The Danish Arts Foundation. Justesen has been a visiting professor and lecturer at art academies in Scandinavia, the U.S., and the Middle East.

The 1970s were especially dedicated to an investigation into the feminine gaze at a time where Justesen’s studio was located between the kitchen and the nursery. Justesen is continuously fighting for women artists’ rights and influence in the art world at many levels--from her work on various boards and positions in foundations, to co-organizing seminars concerning women artists’ positions in society.

Justesen has designed sets for a number of theatres since 1967. The co-operations in the 1990s were mainly with ballet companies. This included libretto and production design with the Randi Patterson Company as well as the building up education for set designers at The Danish National School of Theatre from 1985-90.

Justesen's artwork is represented in private and public collections, worldwide, including Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Kors Drag was published 1999; it comprises a collection of 200 images and 100 lines of words, rewritten by international female artists. Meltingtime # 11 is a retrospective catalogue published in 2003, documenting the melting times presented since 1980. Meltingtime # 16 will take place in Venice in October 2007.

Feminist Artist Statement

"….. Duchamp couldn’t think of anything new.
But for us women artists there was a lot to discover!

To a woman artist wanting everything, society seemed pretty narrow in the 1960s. A battle started in order to conquer breathing space, action space and language space in the world--which, from my point of view, includes having children, a career, and access to means of production in that postwar, welfare and increasingly global environment.

From this simple wish sprang various strategies towards society, strategies which I considered art work--and thank you Mr. Duchamp for deleting the border lines. The revolution was that women artists did this together and insisted on surviving all kinds of bloodshed.

This was done to perceive visual images from a female point of view. Unfold the invisible. Not that easy when you have been educated in a classical sculpture department. What does it look like? My studio was for a long time an inspiring threshold between the nursery and the kitchen.

The images which I have chosen for this feminist art base are part of that struggle. Sculpture # 2, 1968 is a more formal sculptural investigation, as is the last one shown from 1980, Ice Bride # 3 (conquering an iceberg-- melting time!). It refers to three-dimensional investigations that still challenge me.

I have used my own body in most of my work, in order not to get lost.

I take part in this feminist art base as evidence of an ongoing female strategy."

Art, Education, Censorship & Copyright Laws

ART HISTORY - I have an ongoing feud with this crazy woman over the difference between educational usage and the breaking of copyright laws.

Her argument is she wrote it, therefore its hers to distribute.

I however believe that anyone should be able to distribute educational material, in this case pertaining to art history. My argument is that as long as its for educational purposes it falls into the realm of Fair Use, and indeed if I ignored the chance to spread such educational material it would essentially be censorship.

"Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. The term "fair use" originated in the United States, but a similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright."

So in essence I am correct as far as the law goes, but she refuses to understand the principle of it. Some jurisdictions use the Fair Dealing law which is more strict about usage, but when it comes to things posted on the internet pretty everything is fair game because it falls under international laws.

Here's what happened. Years ago we came across a website that was poorly designed and hadn't been updated in a long time. Our immediate assumption was that this website was defunct... but a lot of the articles we thought were valuable for art history education purposes, so we copied the articles and placed them on several active/popular websites so more people could read them, appreciate them and learn from them.

It should be noted at this point we did try contacting the owner of the defunct website, asking for their permission to reproduce (it is only polite after all). They never responded, confirming our conclusion that their website was defunct and no longer in use.

Several YEARS passed and this crazy woman emailed us asking the articles to be removed. According to her the original website is still active (despite looking otherwise). Yada yada yada, we eventually did, but it was a big long argument and we really only did it because she was super annoying and not because of any legal reasons.

What we did was place all the articles on a blog... which qualifies as a news zone. So not only is it educational, buts its also considered a news item. Whenever there is more news on that particular topic we can post more articles... and because it qualifies as both an educational and news website it is CLEARLY exempt from copyright laws.

And frankly what artist doesn't want free promotion and their paintings listed on lots of art history websites? Doesn't every artist want their painting to be as popular as the Mona Lisa some day?

These days we have her blocked, but occasionally she manages to send us a message somehow and we have to find a new way to block her. Whenever she does that however it INSPIRES us to write another article about the importance of education over censorship/copyright. Like today.

Hey crazy lady, stick that up your arse and rotate.

With respect to art (and anything on the internet) the topic of Fair Use comes up frequently. Many artists, notably Andy Warhol, have become known for their usage of other people's works in an effort to create something.

Thus artists, writers, bloggers, educators, feminists, activists and anybody with a bone to pick will always be usurping old material, showing it over again, sometimes changing it, sometimes leaving it as is... and they will always be protected by the laws of Fair Use.

THE ABOVE IMAGES WERE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION. :)