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Journey through history to meet the American female artists who have changed the art world forever.
Visit the online American Women in the Arts collection from the Smithsonian
View Online the FREE Documentaries Art 21 - The Future is Female (2018) and
Art 21 - Super Heroines (2017)
1. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926)
One of three female
artists and the only American officially associated with Impressionism, Mary Cassatt
was also an invaluable adviser, helping introduce European art to major
collectors in the United States. Cassatt strongly believed that painting needed
to reflect modern life. Her modern woman is expertly rendered in the 1878
painting In the Loge, the first Impressionist work the artist
exhibited in the United States. Many male artists depicted women in theater
boxes as objects of display, but Cassatt's female protagonist plays a dynamic
role engaged in the act of looking. Nonetheless, the male gaze prevails, as in
the distance, a gray-haired theatergoer stares directly at her with his own
binoculars. As viewer and onlooker, we complete the circle.
2. Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887-1986)
A seminal figure of American Modernism, in 1915 Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the very first American artists to produce a purely abstract work of art, in contrast to the dominant movement of American realism. In Music, Pink and Blue from 1918, O'Keefe abstracts a floral subject with extreme cropping, producing an archway of colorful petals that hum with a musical energy suggested by the title. The theories of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in part inspired O'Keeffe to explore "the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye," to achieve pure expression free of other external references.
3. Augusta Savage (American, 1892-1962)
A trailblazing sculptor
associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage was also an influential
teacher and activist, advocating for equal rights for African-Americans in the
arts. Born near Jacksonville, Florida, Savage moved to New York City in 1921 to
study art at Cooper Union, beating out 142 men on the waiting list for her spot
at the college. In 1923, Savage applied for a summer art program sponsored by
the French government but was ultimately rejected because of her race. Thus
began her lifelong fight to democratize and equalize the arts. One of her first
commissions, a bust of W. E. B. DuBois for the Harlem Library, was
well-received, and Savage proceeded to sculpt other African-American leaders,
including Marcus Garvey and William Pickens Sr.
In 1929, her sculpture of
a child from Harlem, Gamin, earned her widespread recognition and helped her
secure a scholarship to study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere located in
Paris, where she exhibited her work and won numerous awards. Savage returned to
the United States in 1931 and launched the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts,
which became the Harlem Community Art Center, in 1932. Two years later, she
became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National
Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. For the rest of her life, the
artist continued to create groundbreaking work—she was one of four women to
receive a commission from the 1939 World’s Fair—and dedicated her time to
teaching art to those around her.
4. Elaine Sturtevant (American, 1924-2014)
The works of Elaine Sturtevant (known by her surname) cause a double take; what at first looks like a painting by Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns is actually her own work, appropriating the forms and techniques of the original to a disturbing degree of accuracy. Since 1964, Sturtevant has appropriated the work of her male contemporaries to question the hierarchy of gender, originality, and authorship, as well as the structures of art and culture. In fact, Warhol even acquiesced to let Sturtevant use his screen maker to produce the same Marilyn screen that he used in his own work. As Sturtevant recalls, when Warhol was asked the details of his process, he would tell people to "ask Elaine."
5. Betye Saar (American, B. 1926)
One of the most celebrated artists in
the medium of assemblage, Betye Saar is a true icon within the contemporary art
sphere. Born in Los Angeles, she attended the University of California, Los
Angeles, graduating in 1947 with a degree in design but a passion for
printmaking. In 1967, she visited an exhibition by found objects sculptor
Joseph Cornell that radically impacted her artistic trajectory. She began
lining assemblage boxes with her own prints and drawings, and filling them with
found objects, creating pieces that addressed race and current events.
After the assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.in 1968, her work became more overtly political and extreme.
During the 1970s, Saar was a member of the Black Arts Movement, composed of
poets, writers, performers, and artists who merged activism and art to confront
white power structures and give voice to the Black experience. Her most famous
work, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972),
features a mammy doll armed with a rifle and a grenade, ready to fight against
the prejudice, physical violence, and disparaging stereotypes imposed on Black
Americans. As Saar has explained,
“It is my goal as an artist to create works that expose injustice and reveal
beauty. The rainbow is literally a spectrum of color while spiritually a symbol
of hope and promise.”
6. Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928-2011)
Helen Frankenthaler's breakthrough "stain" painting, Mountains and Sea, from 1952 played a pivotal role in the transition from the grandiose gesture of Abstract Expressionism to the flat, meditative forms of Color Field painting. First and foremost a colorist, Frankenthaler poured cans of paint onto raw canvas, allowing the material to soak into the support, forming amorphous shapes. As a woman of Abstract Expressionism, Frankenthaler broke through the masculine-dominated movement and let her own unique artistic voice be heard. Her work is currently part of a long-overdue exhibition titled the "Women of Abstract Expressionism," which opened at the Denver Art Museum in June 2016 and will travel to The Mint Museum in Charlotte and the Palm Springs Art Museum.
7. Judy Chicago (American, B. 1939)
With her own homage to the
notable women of history, feminist artist, author, and educator Judy Chicago
went considerably further back in time than late 18th-century Paris. In The
Dinner Party from 1974 to 1979, Chicago produced an iconic
installation commemorating 1,038 women in history, with embroidered entry
banners, an engraved floor and a massive triangular banquet table of place
settings for 39 women, with guests ranging from the Primordial Goddess to
Georgia O'Keeffe. Currently housed in the Sackler Center at the Brooklyn
Museum, the installation is a centerpiece of feminist art, produced during a
pivotal period in the 1970s when female artists tackled issues of gender
head-on.
8. Adrian Piper (American, B. 1948)
"Dear Friend, I am Black. I am
sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist
remark," reads Adrian Piper's My Calling (Card) #1 from 1986 to 1990. A
conceptual and performance artist, Piper is a trailblazer for addressing
hot-button issues associated with gender and race. In her Mythic
Being series, Piper transformed herself into a lower-class Black male
and walked the streets of Cambridge, exposing the absurdity of society's
stereotypes.
As a light-skinned Black female
artist, her confrontational work remains extremely prescient and significant
today, pushing us to question societal hierarchy and the perception of
identity. Recently, Piper was awarded the Golden Lion Award for best artist at
the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 for her work The Probable Trust Registry, which consists of corporate-looking kiosks where visitors
could choose to sign contracts agreeing to live by a set of rules that
encouraged personal responsibility.
9. Marilyn Minter (American, B. 1948)
Blurring the lines between the sensual and the grotesque, Marilyn Minter’s photorealistic work addresses contemporary beauty ideals, sexuality, and the human body within the style of glossy fashion imagery. Known for her paintings on enamel and metal, she has a process that consists of taking photographs on film, processing them in a darkroom, and overlaying a select few to create an entirely new composition on which her final painting will be based.
After receiving her BA from the
University of Florida in 1970 and her MFA from Syracuse in 1972, Minter moved
to New York City and began capturing bland scenes associated with feminine
domesticity like the kitchen floor and various food products. In the '80s, she
focused her lens on more sensual subjects, namely the female body and
pornography. Her sexually explicit work received widespread backlash, which
compelled Minter to explore why passion, desire, and intimacy were—and
are—shrouded in public discomfort. Incorporating elements of slick fashion and
beauty photography and vibrant advertising imagery, Minter’s work juxtaposes
notions of glamour and flawlessness (painted lips, bedazzled stilettos, and
glittery eyelids) with less desirable realities (sweat, spit, hair, and dirt).
10. Cindy Sherman (American, B. 1954)
An important artist of the Pictures
Generation, a group of American artists in the early '70s who were known for
their analysis of media culture, Cindy Sherman creates photographic
self-portraits that critique gender and identity. Serving as director, makeup
artist, hairstylist, stylist, model, set designer, and photographer, the artist
metamorphosizes into complex characters and shoots herself within equally
involved scenes.
After attending the State University
of New York at Buffalo, Sherman moved to New York in 1976 to pursue a career in
photography. Shortly after arriving, she began working on Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), her now-iconic series in which she appears
in an array of guises and settings, portraying female stereotypes found within
film and the media including the unhappy housewife,
the jilted lover,
and the vulnerable naif.
Since then, she’s continued to transform into a variety of characters, forcing
her audience to confront other common stereotypes and their artificiality.
Throughout her career, Sherman has
collaborated with a number of fashion brands including Prada, Dolce &
Gabbana, Balenciaga, and Marc Jacobs, and with fashion magazines
including Interview and Harper's BAZAAR.
In 2016, she moonlit as a street style star for a satirical feature in Bazaar’s March
issue.
11. Mickalene Thomas (American, B. 1971)
Best known for her collage-like paintings, Mickalene Thomas creates vibrant portraits and detailed interiors that address themes including sexuality, race, beauty, and gender, and examine how the representation of women in popular cultural informs our definition of femininity. Through her use of rhinestones, which serve as an analogy for femininity, Thomas draws attention to particular components of her pieces (hair, shoes, etc.) and asks viewers to consider what typically characterizes womanhood.
Inspired by an array of
movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism, the artist often
references the figurative work of early modernists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse,
and Edouard Manet in her portraiture, depicting her female subjects in poses
popularized by her male predecessors in an effort to subvert their portrayal of
women as objects.
A member of the Post-Black Art Movement, a category of contemporary African-American art, Thomas holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Yale School of Art and also works in photography, video, sculpture, and installations.