The Feminist Avant-garde

For reasons ultimately unknown, women artists have been second-rate artists, at best, in the history of art so far. In the 20th century, I think Georgia O´Keeffe was on the threshold of being a first-rate artist, but I also think that actually considering her a first-rate artist would go too far. However, you do not always need to be a first-rate phenomenon to make a first-rate impact. (Most of) the Dadaists, the Vienna Actionists or the Fluxus artists have not been first-rate artists, but they have been at the right place at the right time and had the right ideas (in the manner of a low-hanging fruit they were able to pick or so). And so, they deeply ingrained themselves in the history of art; they made sense in the universe. Feminism also makes sense in the universe. Following the social upheavals of the 1960s and the transition to a new type of democratic mass society with a more emancipated and vocal type of citizen, feminism gained considerable momentum in the 1970s. Feminism also found its expression in art at that time. Feminism is not identical to itself though. Generally, feminism fights for women´s rights and the elevation of the status of women. However, there are different strains in trying to define (or to sort out) what it actually is (or means) to be a (wo)man. On the one hand, there is a “biologist” or “essentialist” feminism that claims there is a true identity of the woman, neglected and disfigured by patriarchy however, trying to find out what this true identity is like and realign women with it. On the other hand, there is a “gender deconstructivist” feminism that sees feminity as a mere social construct without a true substance. (These are highly pointed extremes, with the golden path, alongside which you assumingly walk in highest accordance with reality, likely being somewhere in between those extremes.)

Feminist´s and feminist artist´s concern initially was mostly to make their own female voices heard. Carolee Schneemann hit hard with her performances already in the 1960s (she has been a pioneer within performance art and body art in general). Marina Abramovic or Gina Pane came up with transgressive, often dangerous, brutal or tormenting (performance) art as well, implicitely or explicitely expressing female vulnerability as well as triumph over female victimization by patriarchy. Lydia Benglis made parodies of “masculinely reductive” minimal artists like Donald Judd or Carl Andre. Cindy Sherman visualised gender stereotypes, most famously via her Untitled Film Stills. Ana Mendieta tried to investigate the human (and female) connection to the earth or to mythologies (therefore having a much broader agenda than just a feminist one). Francesca Woodman´s photographies are about appearing and disappearing as a woman under the “male gaze”. Ulrike Rosenbach expressed the dullness women have been subjected via their roles as housewifes and the like. Rebecca Horn tried to express how uncomfortable it is for women to navigate through a male-centered society. Valie Export gave Vienna Actionism a feminist turn. In her performances Orlan tried to expose the violence done to women. Though Louise Bourgeois came to success only late in life (and thanks to the feminist movement) and she has not been a distinctly feminist artist, her transgressive art has continued to serve as an inspiration for feminism and feminist art.

Alongside with essentialist feminism there has been the question about whether there was a true “female”/feminine art, of distinct qualities; respectively if there were true, essentially female qualities in women, that have been effectively silenced or distorted by patriarchy. This specific branch of feminism however has always been entangled with difficulties that, in a boomerang-like manner, created backlashes against itself. For instance, differences and binary opposites between “the male” and “the female” have been tried to be identified (and, either, mourned or be affirmed) about which one does not know how much they are grounded in reality or deliberately “constructed” (a term that feminism usually applies for anything “patriarchy” does); like “male” being rational, aggressive, bold, clear-cut though a bit simple-minded, etc.; and “female” being emotional/irrational, soft, diverse, attentive to facets, etc. Reality, by contrast, seems considerably more nuanced and, more often than not, at odds with such categorisations. In the arts for instance, “soft sculpture” had been pioneered by Claes Oldenburg; the grids of Agnes Martin could be seen as masculine; Sol LeWitt´s reductive art, by contrast, has explicitly been hailed by feminist art critics for bringing “variety and disorder”. Moreover, if essentialist feminism seeks to unearth a “genuine” voice of women, how could it be identified what such a genuine voice of women actually will be? Consequentially, there is a tendency in feminism to see numerous voices and expressions by or on behalf of women as “still alienated” (even though there may be truth in that). Following Simone de Beauvoir, feminists have tried to capture the feminine as “the other”. In a more depressed fashion they will imagine this otherness as something still vacant and deprived of positive qualities; in a more narcissistic and grandiose fashion (which might eventually be labelled as “femifascism” or “feminazism”) they may hope to discover some hidden superiority of the feminine that will eventually overpower the masculine. The problem is that “the other” never finally allows closure; although you can experiment with it and get to know it somehow better, the “other” will eventually remain alien and opaque, maybe even just ghost-like. The “other” is bound to remain an enigma. The problem is that feminism, in its desire to free women from “male domination” and “alienation” AND in seeing “male domination” and “alienation” practically anywhere effectively at work, eventually might decouple women from any meaningful social relationships and run into solipsism, i.e. a permanently unstable (and undesirable) condition.

“Gender deconstructivist” feminism, on the other hand, carries the potential of being devoid of any positive, affirmative ideas concerning what a sexual or gendered identity could be, since an essential, biological sex is ontogically absent in its paradigm (in the extreme case; in the usual case the existence of a biological sex is not denied, only deemed irrelevant). Several feminists starkly oppose the “gender deconstructivist” branch of feminism, because they think it will make feminism actually obsolete (as it is deemed to make the female sex obsolete). In the case of Cindy Sherman, there actually is an exploration of gender stereotypes, but not of any positive role models for women. The (vulgarised) poststructural intellectual approach that everything that appears in social reality is just “constructed” and the tendency among feminists to consider everything they do not like as “patriarchal constructs” empties reality out of its density, its meaning and its substance. It is a fetishised view upon reality and upon human interactions. In the case of feminism, much of what is considered (and condemned) as “patriarchy” by feminists to a more moderate viewer might rather appear as stuff that naturally happens in reality, and among humans. Much of the art of the feminist avant-garde for instance revolved around the subjugation of the woman under the “male gaze”, or the reduction of the woman to a “muse” and “inspiration” (and not as a creator in her own right), or to the imposition of “patriarchal beauty standards” upon women. However, one simply cannot help seeing a robust narcissistic exhibitionism at work in the art of Hannah Wilke, Francesca Woodman or Valie Export, in which they permanently present their (beautiful) female bodies, i.e. there sems to be quite a collusion at play between a “male” gaze and a “female” desire to be seen (in the case of Hannah Wilke at least, her permanent, somehow flirtatious presentation of her beautiful naked female body in her feminist art has met staunch criticism from feminist art critics like Lucy Lippard – Valie Export´s art has been considered “pornographic” at least by more conservative viewers at that time). And in the end, it is irritating how the artists of the feminist avant-garde time and again make themselves the center of their art, in their nude or other portraits. The feminist avantgarde wanted to attack the self-saturated egomania of the male artist, however male artists are not known to have done anything similar.

The so-called feminist avant-garde has been something (or has accompanied something) that is socially very relevant. Therein might lie the gravity of the feminist avant-garde. Its currency is social relevance, and relevance for the individual emancipation of (wo)men. It seems a thing that needed to be done, it relates to things that needed to be sorted out, so as to be able to ascend to the next level. Unfortunately, intellectually and artistically the “male” (-dominated) avant-garde half a century before deems much more substantial than the feminist avant-garde. One is sorry to say that the feminist avant-garde (which does NOT mean: art done by female artists in general) seems to lack brilliant ideas as well as executions. It is not particularly brainy. Maybe a “feminist avant-garde” is even a bit of an oxymoron. In order to be (intellectually) avant-garde, you need to think at a very high level of abstraction and you need to transcend society in many ways. That is what happened within modern art, and among the eminent modern artists. Feminism does not operate at such a level of abstraction and it does not desire to transcend the social realm – its battles are within the social realm. Likely, the kind of visceral, bold kind of art of the feminist avant-garde was appropriate to its cause. It is difficult to think how the feminist rage could have been expressed in aesthetically pleasing paintings or so. Some Dadaism likely had to be applied. Nevertheless I am somehow disappointed by the feminist avant-garde. I would have expected more from it. Contemporarily there is of course a tendency to praise anything feminist or anything done by a woman in highest terms. Therefore some also praise the feminist avant-garde as kind of the most important movement in art ever since, with “immense” and “profound” impact on the arts in general ever since. Well, but I don´t know. First of all, the feminist avant-garde has not been a true avant-garde, and it has not truly been revolutionary (and after all, it is a term labelled in retrospect – to make propaganda for an exhibition about the feminist art of the 1970s). Feminism and feminist art, and the impact it has made on society since the 1970s, rather deem evolutionary within our kind of society; the broadening understandings concerning “gender and diversity” a natural process within open societies and within modernity – as modernity means a broadening of understandings, and of understandings and concepts becoming more complex and differentiated. Such societies also become more “democratic”, and allergic to any “elitism”. This does not necessarily produce awesome results. For instance, look at the arts. For reasons ultimately unknown, women artists have been second-rate artists, at best, in the history of art so far (there have been first-rate female writers/poets nevertheless). Yet today, among the internationally renowned artists there are considerably more women than in the past. Unfortunately, this is a mixed success at best, because there practically are no more first-rate artists around, be they male, female or diverse. Women are now more present in art, but art has ceased to be a first-rate phenomenon. Maybe the impact of the feminist avant-garde (and its desire to dismantle the “male” artistic genius) on the arts was that it helped to lower the standards and to allow things that are not very inspired to enter the domain of art.

I would not like to miss the feminist avant-garde, however. I do not like all too male dominated gatherings of humans. Likely, they are, in such an exclusiveness, actually dysfunctional, as the feminists claim. As everyone knows, I champion intellectualism, universalism, and the avant-garde. I desire to understand the world in the most universal way possible, and I suspect particuliarian and partisan ideologies to be an expression of (finally anti-intellectual and unethical) egocentricities, however justified they may appear or be in their original intent. Because of my unusual personality and my anti-egocentric attitude I can stretch out into the universal quite successfully. However I have come to notice that universality is impossible. It is a common feature – among universalists and partisan people alike – to think stuff out there and humans out there are more or less like themselves. I have become more sensible recently – to the fact that they are not. Therefore I welcome the surfacing of particularian ideologies, because they give me a better understanding of the world and a sense of how stuff in this world and people in this world are truly different from each other. This is, finally, something sad. But it is the way it is, or how it seems to be. The feminist avant-garde has been the expression of a particuliarian sentiment and ideology. With a universal appeal, of course, with the desire to broaden the understanding of the universal. This is so because women, i.e. half of the world´s population, are universal. Feminism, by contrast, still has not come to be a universal narrative that is applied by the majority of women. To a considerable degree, it is even rejected by many women (and, granted, there is some mystery to that). Some of the fallacies of feminism have been mentioned in this text, and one might think of others as well.