This document discusses issues related to women in art and new media. It provides statistics showing that while women earn over half of MFAs and make up 51% of visual artists, only 5% of art in museums and 3% of artists in the Modern Art section of the Met are women. It then profiles several influential feminist artists including Jenny Holzer, Nan Goldin, Petra Collins, and Judy Chicago, discussing their groundbreaking work addressing themes like sexuality, the female body, and the male gaze from a woman's perspective.

1. Women And
Art/New Media
{
Alexandria Bourekas,Diana Mallayeva, Lara
Berlyne, Chinea Rodriguez

2. Women and The Arts

51% of visual artists today are women.

Only 5% of the art currently on display in U.S. museums is
made by women.

Less than 3% of the artists in the Modern Art section of New
York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, but 83% of
the nudes are female.

Only 27 women are represented in current edition of H.W.
Janson's survey, History of Art—up from zero in the 1980s.

Though women earn more than 1/2 of the MFAs granted in
the US, only 1/3 of gallery representation is women.

The question is not “Why haven’t there been more great
women artists?” its “Why haven’t more women been
considered great artists throughout Western history?”

3. Sexism in the Art World

The men liked to put me down as the best
woman painter. I think I’m one of the best
painters.”—Georgia O’Keeffe

In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, women
could not purchase their own paints. They
had to rely on a male relative or instructor.

“This is so good you wouldn’t know it was
done by a woman.”—artist-instructor Hans
Hofmann's “compliment” to Lee Krasner.

4. Less than 3% of the artists in the Modern Art
section of New York's Metropolitan Museum of
Art are women, but 83% of the nudes are
female

5. Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer is an artist best
known for her LED displays of
short statements she calls
truisms. These truisms are
displayed publicly through
different mediums from LED
displays and projections to tshirts and condoms. She often
publishes her work anonymously
saying, "I like to be absolutely
out of view and out of earshot. I
don’t sign my work because I
think that would diminish its
effectiveness. It would be the
work of just one person. I would
like it to be more useful than
that- to be of utility to as many
people as possible. I think if it
were attributed to me it would be
easier to toss. I want people to
concentrate on the content of the
work and not whodunit."

6. "I used language because I
wanted to offer content that
people—not necessarily art
people—could
understand." - Jenny
Holzer,

7. She started out displaying her own texts
but has since incorporated the text of
others. The subject of her work ranges
from poems, to short statements about
society and war. Her 2010 prints entitled
Lustmord (sex murder) featured words
on skin and the words of victims of war
in Bosnia, including women affected by
war.

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I do make work that
focuses on unnecessary
cruelty, in the hope that
people will recoil. I
would like there to be
less fear and cruelty." Holzer

8. Nan Goldin
"Somebody I used to photograph constantly said it was no
different from drinking a cup of coffee with me. I mean it
became an extension of me, the camera. "I never photograph out
of hate, and I never photograph somebody I find ugly. Everyone
I photograph comes out of desire. They touch me, or I find
their face fascinating. And I don't think I've ever taken a
mean picture intentionally in my life."(Nan Goldin, Interview
by Angelique Chrisafis)
Her sister committed suicide
when Nan was 11, causing her
move
out as an adolescent. While she
was living in foster homes, she
was given a Polaroid in art
school and brought it
everywhere
with her.

9. Many of Nan Goldin’s friends
and subjects were drag queens
and drug addicts.

10. "It was written in the tabloids that I was a 51year-old
junkie who made my fame or living by
photographing
pornographic pictures of young girls. I was
shocked. I never
took pornography. I hate pornography. I knew
a lot of people
who worked in the sex trade when I worked in
a bar on Times
Square. I knew pimps and prostitutes, and I
knew friends who
entered the sex trade to make money to do
their art. So I was
familiar with the world of pornography, and I
always found it
distressing and based on contempt. To me,
pornography is all
about money. That's the difference between
pornography and
art."(Nan Goldin, Interview by Angelique
Chrisafis)

11. "It's really hard for me to do commercial work ,because
people kind of want me to do a 'Nan Goldin.' They don't
understand that it's not about a style or a look or a setup.
It's about emotional obsession and empathy. I shot one of the
top models in Paris, She didn't know what the word ballet
meant.”

12. Petra Collins
Petra Collins is a 20 year old Canadian-born feminist
artist, writer, photographer, and director who uses social
media to express feminine sexual power and passion.
She is known for her controversial Instagram account
deletion because her photographs and drawings run
counter to what we would expect from mainstream
media. Her images express what being a young woman
under societal pressures is really like; it makes those
who have only experienced representation of the
feminine ideal as defined by the male gaze very
uncomfortable.

13. Collins is fascinated with teenage life in the
suburbs. the isolation and growing pains that
that are a sad but true part of the “golden
years.” Her audience is Rookie Magazine
readers, readers of Vice, and American
Apparel junkies and employees alike.

15. She also critiques the male
gaze, and finds female
empowerment through
menstruation, a theme in
her body of works that span
to various mediums.
http://purple.fr/television/sex/crimson-crusade

16. 
“I know having a social media profile removed
is a 21st century privileged problem -- but it is
the way a lot of us live. These profiles mimic
our physical selves and a lot of the time are
even more important. They are ways to connect
with an audience, to start discussion, and to
create change. Through this removal, I really
felt how strong of a distrust and hate we have
towards female bodies. The deletion of my
account felt like a physical act, like the public
coming at me with a razor, sticking their finger
down my throat, forcing me to cover up,
forcing me to succumb to society's image of
beauty. That these very real pressures we face
everyday can turn into literal censorship.”Petra Collins

17. Gynolandscape was a recent event hosted by
the Andorous, a female art collective curated by
Petra Collins dealing with female sexuality
along with American Apparel to help promote
their new t-shirts. All of the art in both the
Andorous and featured in Gynolandscape are
created by women who are fearless in their
representation of themselves and other women
in unexpected ways running counter to
mainstream culture. These images are shocking
as menstruation and the feminine mystique are
usually so overtly expressed, yet ignored at the
same time.

18. Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago, born Judy Cohen, is
a world renowned, highly
influential feminist artist. By the
1970s, Chicago had coined the
term “feminist art" and had
founded the first feminist art
program in the United States.

19. "I was raised in a family
that believed in equal
rights for women, which
was very unusual for
that time. The bad news
was they never bothered
to tell me that not
everyone else believed in
that, too." (LA Weekly,
What I Learned From
Male Chauvinists).
The Birth
Project

20. The Dinner Party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yMtdWxAc60

21. “The Dinner Party is a sort of reinterpretation
of the last supper from the point of view of
those who had done the cooking throughout
history” – Judy Chicago

22. How do we encourage
women to go into the arts,
and how to we encourage
people to support women
in the arts?