Bridging Feminist Art, Activism, and Theory: A Review of Three Contemporary Texts

Abstract

Suzanne Lacy provides a framework for conceptualizing feminist activist art in a letter to Patricia Hills, editor of the anthology Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century. Lacy asks, "How can we work as artists on a broader scale, to create change that will penetrate and affect the institutions, public spaces, and political processes that make up our public culture" iHills 2001, 452)? This political goal has overwhelmingly driven feminist activism of the last century. Yet, as Lacy suggests, a wider horizon challenges feminist art practice. To date, feminist art-making has played only one role within an expansive field that necessarily includes feminist theory, cultural criticism, and art history. The numerous texts published on feminist art/theory within the last ten years suggest that any singular account of this dense nexus proves daunting. In an increasingly theory-driven moment, we are still sorting out the question: where and when do theory, art-making, and activism, meet? Or, one might ask where, and when, can they be separated? Although none of the three very different texts under consideration here provide direct answers to these questions, they illuminate distinct modes of engaging them. Two of the texts are anthologies: The Feminisim and Visual Culture Reader assembles 62 significant writings on feminism's convergence with visual culture in the Anglophone world in the latter twentieth century, while Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century is a more varied collection of essays by artists, curators, and critics reaching back one hundred years. As a counterpoint to these volumes, Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building tells of one woman's experiences in a vibrant center of pioneer feminist activism that centered on art, the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Part coming-of-age and part coming-out tale, writer Terry Wolverton's memoir, Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building, provocatively chronicles her involvement with the Woman's Building. Founded