How many famous women artists can you name off the top of your head? Go ahead. Take a moment and think about it. Do you have one? Maybe a couple or even a few? It’s tough, I know, but women have been creating art for centuries! Not only have they been creating art, but they have been using it to make a statement about what it means to be a woman in the world.
Perhaps one of the first famous women painters, Artemisia Gentileschi was a baroque painter (alive from 1593 to 1653) who developed fame and recognition as early as her teens. While the baroque style came in and out of fashion, interest in her work remains strong due to the relevance of her subject matter. Her Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting shows herself as a woman artist deeply dedicated to her craft, not just indulging in a hobby to make herself an object of society.
Impressionism is all about capturing the moment, and Mary Cassatt seized this style to depict the modern, dynamic woman. Her painting, In the Loge, shows a woman deeply invested and engaged in the theatre as opposed to the commonly represented ornament to society.
Performance artists like Yoko Ono confront their audiences directly and even with active participation. Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece asked viewers to come on stage to cut away pieces of her clothing, acting in many ways as a commentary on how strangers interact with the body of a vulnerable woman.
A member of the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s and a celebrated assemblage artist, Betye Saar uses repurposed objects as a way of reclaiming images. Her work wrestles with themes from the events of the civil rights movement to, as she puts it, “expose injustice and reveal beauty.”