Projecting a Feminist CriticismAuthor(s): Lucy R. LippardSource: Art Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 337-339Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776224 .

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Projecting a Feminist Criticism*

LUCY R. LIPPARD

Feminism, or at least the self-consciousness of femaleness, has opened the way for a new context within which to think about art by women. So far, such thinking (and feminist criticism itself) is only tentative. Within the old, "progres- sive," or "evolutionary" contexts, much women's art is "not innovative," or "retrograde" (or so I have been told repeat- edly by men since I started writing about women; they say I no longer qualify for the "avant-garde"). Some women artists are consciously reacting against avant-gardism and retrench-

ing in aesthetic areas neglected or ignored in the past; others are unaffected by such rebellious motivations but continue to work in "personal" modes that outwardly resemble varied art styles of the recent past. One of the major questions facing feminist criticism has to be whether stylistic innovation is indeed the only innovation, or whether other aspects of

originality have yet to be investigated: "Maybe the existing forms of art for the ideas men have had are inadequate for the ideas women have."' Susana Torre suggests that perhaps women, unable to identify with historical styles, are really more interested in art itself, in self-expression and its collec- tive history and communication, differing from the tradi- tional notion of the avant-garde by opposing not styles and forms, but ideologies.2

To run counter to the so-called mainstreams is one way of

developing a feminist context, though therein lies the dan-

ger of being controlled by what one opposes. Also, the

perception of art world viewers, trained to see within the other context, may not be able to distinguish the genuine at-

tempts to forge a new mode or a new image for new, and

thereby unrecognizable, content. Old habits die hard. Some feminist artists have chosen a fundamentally sexual or erotic

imagery that is inescapably seen "through the object's eye" (to use the title of a Joan Semmel painting). Others have

opted for a realist or conceptual celebration of female ex-

perience in which birth, motherhood, rape, maintenance, household imagery, windows, menstruation, autobiography, family background, portraits of friends, figure prominently. Others feel the only feminist art has a "right-on" political posterlike content. Others are involved in materials and colors formerly denigrated as "feminine," or in a more sym- bolic or abstract parallel to their experiences; for example, images of veiling, confinement, enclosure, pressures, bar- riers, constrictions, as well as unwinding, unfolding, and sensuous surfaces, are common. Others are dealing with

organic "life" images and others are starting with the self as

subject, moving from the inside outward. All of this work, at its best, exchanges stylistic derivation for a convincing in-

sight into a potential female culture. Every artist trying to extricate her personal expressions and a universal feminism from the styles and prejudices of a male culture is undertak-

ing a risky and courageous enterprise. But a feminist art does not consist simply of imagery or of

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"picturings," although these must inevitably be a vehicle for its effect. Judith Stein has pointed out that "perhaps the only things a truly feminist artist would concern herself with are the feminist movement and building a feminist art system inside a feminist society."3 Until that society is clarified, feminist art must struggle to define itself within the art sys- tem as it stands-a capitalist system already appropriated by and probably more appropriate to male art. The formal anti- content tradition which has been prevalent in the last 15

years of aesthetics and criticism of abstract art militates

against comprehension of a feminist art with different values. For as Shulamith Firestone has pointed out: "In those cases where individual women have participated in male culture, they have had to do so in male terms. And it shows. ... It is not just a question of being as competent, it is also a question of being authentic."4

The earliest feminist artists (I'm thinking particularly of

Judy Chicago in 1970-71) found that no matter how much

they talked about their intentions, public perception was unable to grasp the meaning of the work as they had in- tended it. Because Chicago's form language had painfully evolved out of years in the male culture, it was still superfi- cially recognizable within that culture and could be read back into it even by relatively sympathetic viewers. Only when her

imagery grew increasingly sexual and overt, and only when this process coincided with a higher level of consciousness in the general art world as well as in her primary audience-the Los Angeles women's community-did it begin to make sense as feminist art.

Psychological interpretations of art have not been popular since the late 1950s and an artist insisting on content, when faced by an audience trained not to peer past the surface or look behind the object, will complain that "no one under- stands what I'm doing," just as the artist who persists in a neutral intellectual or formal reading will be distressed by an

"ignorant" audience which approaches art from its own life

experience and associations. An exclusively female audience

might alter this perceptual distortion or prejudice to some extent, but sooner or later the goal of feminist art, bolstered

by the confidence and understanding received in a female

community, is to enter the real world and affect everyone- all those people whom contemporary art has failed to reach or to move. The question of authenticity is one of the great- est barriers to the comprehensibility of a feminist art, and it is one that feminist criticism must confront so that the larger public may also deal with it.

Clearly everyone looks forward to the time when the dis- tinctions between male and female are minimized in favor of a more human equality. This will not happen until we under- stand the elements and conditions which underlie the experi- ence of each sex. A lot of women artists have joined together, successfully, to bring more women into the system as it now stands. But if the art itself, whatever its "quality," is indistin- guishable from the art made by men that is already in the

galleries, nothing will change. Arguments against distinction between men's and women's expressions inevitably contain elements of fear or competition, or isolationist insistence on the distinction of every artist's work from that of every other artist's. (Nobody's art is an immaculate conception, but in aesthetics, parthenogenesis is possible; women can now be- gin to work from the embryonic history of other women's art.) The most valid objection to the notion of a "women's

art" is the basic fear that an individual's art will not be seen with a free eye, or seen with equal concentration, or seen as one intended it, or seen at all, if preconceptions and categor- izations overwhelm it. But it would be naive not to realize the extent to which this is already true in today's art world. I wince when I hear all the lovely variety of women's art lumped together as a single entity. Nor do I think all art by women or all feminist art is good art. At the moment that's not even the point, because I'm questioning what good art is

anyway. While I hope that the mere presence of more women in the art establishment is changing its values

slightly-simply because women are different from men-I worry that we will be absorbed and misled before we can

fully develop a solid value structure of our own. The gap between object and intelligent perception of the

object is, of course, one of the prevailing problems of mak- ing art at any time in an alienated society. It is a time and

space gap, filled only when the work is finally shown, dis- cussed, written about, deciphered by an audience-in short, when the moment of communication is at hand. But the feminist gap is a more fundamental one. It cannot be closed by mere absorption into the current system. In the bad old

days, women artists often worked in isolation, worked from and for themselves and were paradoxically freer from the

pressures and influences felt within the art world. For once there, the temptation is to work for the art audience. That temptation may prove a more effective barrier to the evolu- tion of a feminist art than discrimination is. I should know. I am still entrenched in this same art world I so often protest. In fact, feminism is my sole remaining excuse for being there. There are so few of us writing primarily on women's art, and so few feminists in the establishment, I feel needed. I am needed. At the same time, maybe it's a copout. The goal of radical feminism is to change the world. I would like to revolutionize but I am stuck with reform because of the context I work in. Right now art feminism is trapped within the system.

While I feel strongly that women should have a chance at

everything that men have, even the bad things, I am all too aware of the traps set by the art world for the ambitious artist. And women are, of course, as ambitious as men, though one of the feminist goals is to get rid of hierarchies. The older women, who are just having their first exhibitions after years of lonely struggle, are discovering they can be ambitious. The

younger women, just finding their ways free of total male domination, are more wary of ambition but they are also surer of themselves and well able to compete. As a critic, it's none of my business to tell artists not to grab whatever chances for fame and fortune present themselves, especially when I'm making a living off the same system. The entrance of more art by women into the establishment is certainly good for the establishment. But it is, perhaps, less of a good thing for a future feminist art. One of the questions we have yet to answer is whether women do want the same things that men have wanted; whether "greatness" in its present form is in fact desirable.5

Perhaps the greatest challenge to the feminist movement in the visual arts, then, is the establishment of new criteria by which to evaluate not only the aesthetic effect, but the communicative effectiveness of art attempting to avoid be- coming a new establishment in itself, or, God forbid, a new stylistic "movement," to be rapidly superseded by some

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other one. Women's conditioning and capacity to please can lead to pleasing a broad audience as well as to pleasing the art hierarchy-a broad audience which would be, of course, half female. Finding that audience, making contact, is a political as much as an artistic act, but it is as creative as

anything an artist can do. It takes immense amounts of

energy, courage, originality. The art world route is easier. Nevertheless, there are women emerging, all over the world now, who have realized through experience how

unsatisfying success can be in an alien framework. They are the ones who will make a feminist art reflecting a different set of values. Precisely which values can be worked out only in

relationship to a new community, not the present art world, which can be called a community only at times of severe stress or crisis, when the competition at its core is temporar- ily submerged. Perhaps the art will not change until the community changes it, or until it changes in response to the

community. We have not wholly realized how deep a trans- formation is necessary.

To begin with, we have to think about why it is so difficult to go past a certain point in discussing the ways in which a woman's art can answer the needs of a greater female (and, potentially, a liberated male) audience. The fact that most women artists are not very interested in these needs damp- ens, but hopefully will not extinguish the spark. Why are we all still so afraid of being other than men? Women are still in

hiding. We still find it difficult, even the young ones, to

express ourselves freely in large groups of men. Since the art world is still dominated by men, this attitude pervades the art that is being made. In the process, feelings and forms are neutralized. For this reason, I am all in favor of a separatist art world for the time being-separate women's schools, galler- ies, museums-until we reach the point when feminists are as at home in the world as men are. The danger of separa- tism, however, is that it becomes not a training ground, but a protective womb. The only effective strategies are those ef- fective inside and outside a separatist society. Exchange, for instance, is a feminist strategy; out of dialogue between

peers comes a focus to be shared by others. There is no reason why strong women artists cannot emerge from a feminist community to operate in both spheres, why they cannot in fact form a trialectic between the female world, the art world, and the real world. That's where I'd like to be. How to get there is the question.

I know now that I have not only to analyze my own (accul- turated) taste but also to translate it into a value system which can universalize the task. (Male experience is already univer- sal.) I have not only to re-examine the psychological and social motivations of myself and of the artists I write about, but also to find out what the prevalent metaphors refer to

beyond themselves. I have to develop a temperamental con- sciousness into a cultural consciousness. So while I wish I could claim to be establishing a new feminist criticism, all I am doing at the moment is extending the basic knowledge of art by women, providing the raw material for such a develop- ment. The ongoing process which forms my own criticism will produce neither conclusions nor solutions, but will, I

hope, engender more questions, more dialogue, more dis- cussion, more investigation on the part of women artists and critics as well as myself. The art being made now contains the seeds of such change, more or less invisible-but growing, growing. C

* Excerpt from the introduction to From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art by Lucy R. Lippard, to be published by E. P. Dutton, August, 1976.

Judy Chicago, Strait (Buffalo), Feb. 1973. 2 Susana Torre, in conversation with the author around this preface. 3 Judith Stein, "For a Truly Feminist Art," The Big News (California Institute of the Arts), v. 1, no. 9, May 22, 1972, p. 3. 4 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, New York, 1971, p. 157. 5 See Carol Duncan, "When Greatness Is A Box of Wheaties," Artforum, October, 1975.

Lucy R. Lippard is an art critic, a feminist, and author of ten books on contemporary art, two in press (From the Center and Eva Hesse) and one unpublished (Ad Reinhardt).

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