Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Trying to understand feminist art theory can be as confusing as trying humanity itself. Feminist art historian Hilary Robinson writes that “unlike most other ‘isms’ of the art world, the term ‘feminist art’ does not automatically imply a certain approach to art-making, or the use of certain media; nor does it imply what the foremost concern of the artist is in making the piece of work” (1). This serves as a reasonable summation of why feminist art and art theory is a somewhat impossible topic to entirely define. Feminist art and art theory engulfs so much, and manifests itself in so many forms – how is one to begin to understand a single piece of it? Laurie Schneider Adams defines the feminist approach to art and art history as being “predicated on the idea that gender is an essential element in understanding the creation, content, and evaluation of art” (79). This one sentence provides a very broad definition of the single thing that could be said to link all feminist art and theory – gender. Feminism in itself contains a number of different, even opposing, ideologies – essentialist, culturalist, Freudian, anti-Freudian… the list could go on and on. And then one has the task of differentiating betwee