Press Release
Feminist Artistic Theory and Practice: Debates, Issues, Perspectives
with
Nicole Schweizer and Elvan Zabunyan
Debate (5/6)
Tuesday 4 May 2004
Nicole Schweizer (born 1973)
is an art historian, curator and research assistant at the Basel Kunstmuseum
“History and politics: can art history survive feminism?” This
was Griselda Pollock’s provocatively worded contribution to one of the
rare books published in France with a title combining the notions of feminism,
art and art history (Yves Michaud, ed., Féminisme, art et histoire
de l’art, Paris: Espaces de l’art, 1994). Taking its lead
from the same question, and referring to recent writings by Griselda Pollock
herself (Leeds) as well as authors such as Lisa Tucker (London), Irit Rogoff
(London) and Mieke Bal (Amsterdam), this discussion considers the changes of
perspective induced by feminist interventions in the discipline of art history.
How has feminist criticism displaced the object(s) around which the discipline
was traditionally articulated? What new objects did this bring about and how,
as an effect of these, does(do) feminist art history(ies) need to keep repositioning
itself(themselves)? And in light of this, is it possible for feminist art historians
to work in a “disciplinary” manner?
Elvan Zabunyan (born 1968), lecturer in the history of
contemporary art at the Université de Rennes 2, art critic and curator
In 1975 Valie Export wrote that “Women must use all media as means
towards social struggle and social progress with the objective of liberating
culture from exclusively masculine values”. How can women artists
escape the paradox of being both alienated by their gender and liberated
by their consciousness of their sexual identity? In the 1970s, when feminism
was beginning to be theorised in accordance with its inscription in many
different disciplines, it was at its most visible in contemporary art.
The women artists who decided to undertake an analysis of the status of
women and feminism in their visual representations did so in a radical
manner. Their activism and artistic practices attempted to define a new
aesthetic form. Thirty years later, these same artists have become historic
figures while as a result of new developments in the present their discourse
is as relevant as ever. And so, while they are still producing new work,
it is their practice from the “feminist 1970s” that gets the
most media attention. What, then, is the status of women and feminist artists
today?