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Feminism and Political Issues: Barbara Kruger and Hannah Höch
Feminism and political issues have always been centered on in the art world and artists like to take these ideas and stretch them beyond their true meanings. Female artists such as Hannah Höch, who thrived during the Dada movement in the 1920s in Germany and Barbara Kruger who was most successful during the 1980s to 1990s in the United States, both take these issues and present them in a way that forces the public to think about what they truly mean. Many of Kruger’s works close in on issues such as the female identity and in relation to politics she focuses on consumerism and power. Höch, like Kruger, also focuses on female identity but from the 1920s when feminism was a fairly new concept and like Kruger focuses on politics but focuses more on the issues of her time such as World War I. With the technique of photomontage, these two artists take outside images and put them together in a way that displays their true views on feminism and politics even though both are from different times and parts of the world.
Feminist issues have played an important role in creating ideas for female artists to use in their work. Putting out controversial themes such as this promotes individual thought on the topic of feminism. Kruger and Höch both took it upon themselves to put out these ideas through many of their key artworks. In 1920, Höch came out with her photomontage, Das Schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl) (Fig. 1), which at the time was one of very few photomontages that Dada artists had included female figures in. (Hemus, 104). In this particular work she puts together many different images that create a certain meaning that the viewer is left to interpret. She uses a fema...
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...riginators may have led Kruger to the style of art that she still produces to this day. It is easy to see that both artists, though from different times and places, share similar ideas and techniques about political issues
Works Cited
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2. Goodeve, Thyrza. “The Art of Public Address.” Art in America (1997): 1-20. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 25 Nov. 2013
3. Hemus, Ruth. “Dada’s Women.” New Haven & London. Yale University Press, 2009. Online.
4. Linker, Kate. “Love For Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger.” New York. Harry N. Abrams, 1996. Print.
5. Mitchell, W.J.T and Kruger, Barbara, “An Interview with Barbara Kruger.” Critical Inquiry. Vol. 17, No. 2, 1991. pp. 434-448, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343844.
Alice Neel’s painting Suzanne Moss was created in 1962 using oil paint on canvas. As the title suggests, the painting depicts a woman’s portrait. Now resigning in the Chazen Museum in Madison, WI, this portrait of a woman lunging is notable for the emotional intensity it provokes as well as her expressionistic use of brush strokes and color. The scene is set by a woman, presumably Suzanne Moss, dressed in dull back and blues lounging across a seat, staring off to the side, avoiding eye contact with the viewer. The unique style and technique of portraiture captures the woman’s piercing gaze and alludes to the interior emotions of the subject. In Suzanne Moss, Alice Neel uses desultory brush strokes combined with contrast of warm and cool shadows
“Laurie Halse Anderson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Gale, 15 May 2008. Contemporary Authors Online. Gale. Web. 16 Nov. 2009
According to feminist Victoria L. Bromley, if feminism is about combating all forms of inequalities, including oppression, towards all social groups, then feminists must study how masculinity oppresses both men and women. Patriarchy, men’s powers and dominance, hegemonic masculinity, the idea that the “dominant group” in society is most powerful, and hyper masculinity, the exaggeration of the emphasis on male characteristics, all lead to oppression through multiple forms: privileges and unearned privileges, hierarchies of power and exclusion. Bromley argues that the feminist approach towards eliminating oppression, is to use an intersectional analysis, a theoretical tool used for understanding how multiple identities are connected and how systems
Vol. 8. Chicago, IL: World Book, 2009. Print. G Freeman, Shanna.
Frida Kahlo and Barbara Kruger’s issues faced throughout their lifetime can be connected to our course. Frida Kahlo’s artwork could be discussed in the Guerrilla Girls book that we have read early in the semester. The Guerrilla Girls portrayed different artists, and their battles faced as women. Frida Kahlo’s art was overshadowed by her artistic husband, Diego Rivera, similarly to many other women artists in the Guerilla Girls. Most women were not credited for their artwork, and were not portrayed in guilds unless they were married or came from a wealthy family. Barbara Kruger’s photography portrayed many feminist prints. Throughout this course, we have discussed the meaning of being a feminist and the issues feminist face
Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,
These mediums range from photography, graphic design, and re-appropriated magazines; however, she mostly known for her work using her graphic design skills along with the use of re-appropriated pop culture photos to illustrate twenty-first-century consumerism and ideals. Her work could be described as editing modern advertisements with slaps of (font) text on them to make a statement that criticizes Western ideals (Independent). This medium is vital to what Kruger works within. By using appropriated magazines and pithy phrases, she is able to express a dialog with the people of today because it is relatable. Kruger understands her audience. She captures the human mind in a few words. She understands that society has long had a short intention span and she capitalizes on it.
Loeffelholz, Mary et al. (2011). The Norton Anthology of American Litterature: New York, W. W. Norton & Company. pp 3-20
Lincolnwood: Jamestown Publishers, 1999. 54-56 Print Goodrich, Frances, and Albert Hackett. The Dairy Of Anne Frank. Literature. The.
This investigation will examine a few key works by the anonymous female artist group know in popular culture as the Guerrilla Girls. In this essay it will reveal several prominent themes within the groups works that uncover the racial and gender inequalities in politics, art and pop culture with the use of humor. These collaborating artists work and operate with a variety of mediums, their works display a strong message concerned with activism connected by humor allowing the Guerrilla Girls to communicate and resonate a more powerful message to the viewer. The ways in which this collaborating group has employed many questions and facts against the hierarchy and historical ideologies which have exploited women and their roles in art. This investigation will allow the reader to identify three areas in which the Guerrilla Girls apply a certain forms of humor to transform society’s view on the prominent issue of gender in the art world. These specific ploys that are performed by the Guerrilla Girls are in the way they dress, the masks they wear, pseudonymous names of dead women artists and the witty factual evidence in their works. These are all examples to evoke audiences in challenging not only the art society which dictates the value and worth of women in art but also to confront yourself and your own beliefs in a way that makes audiences rethink these growing issues.
Prose, Francine. Interview by Katie Bolick. The Atlantic Online. N.p., 11 Mar. 1998. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. .
Dialogues 7th ed. Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Kruger. New York: Parson-Longman, 2011. 490-92.
French, Marilyn. "Introduction." Sand, George. Marianne. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc. , 1998. 171.
Many associate the Berlin Dada movement with Raoul Hausmann, Johannes Baader, Hans Richter, George Grosz, John Heartfield and Weiland Herzfelde, and very few associate the art movement with Hannah Hoch. Although Hoch was overshadowed by her male contemporaries, she did not hesitate from being an active member of the Berlin Dada creating timeless and critical artworks. She is best known for being a pioneer in photomontage, a technique that was instrumental not just for Hoch, but for many Berlin Dadaists. Her most well-known photomontages are satirical and political commentaries on Weimar’s redefinition of the social roles of women, also known as the concept of the “new woman”. If during her early years she would create artworks that attempted to portray the concept of the “new woman”, in her later years she began creating artworks that responded to this new Weimarian
...forms of address, weights and measures, signs and symbols. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Print.