bi-monthly newsletter of visual, literary & cultural criticism
in this issue
//COMMENTARIES//
THE TERM FEMINISM STILL MAKES MANY AMERICANS uncomfortable. Indeed, in some academic and art circles the very mention of the term suggests bad taste; it’s embarrassing, passé, naïve, messy, vulgar, too female, too vaginal, too earnest, too loud, too difficult. Art produced by women working through the feminist revolution of the 1970s continues for the most part to be historicized in a reductive and essentializing way. There is a widespread willingness in Western societies to agree that feminism accomplished its aims, that social equality of the sexes or genders has been achieved, and that ‘it’s time to move on’. All this, of course, in an effort to silence, ignore, or (worse) deny the persistent relevance of the paradigm shift brought about by feminism’s methods and ideologies and discount the ongoing importance of feminist art practices. This spring’s concurrent openings of Connie Butler’s all-women, international, historical survey exhibition, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at MOCA in Los Angeles and the Brooklyn Museum’s Global Feminisms show of feminisms’ ongoing presence in art made since the feminist revolution, signal a pervasive revisiting of feminism in the art world. Our writers respond to this wave of retrospection and reconsideration of what feminism means today.