WOMEN'S WORK

...As evidence of art's redefinition, one need only compare the early 1970s to the middle 1980s...

...at Washington's Corcoran Gallery, 6 per cent...

...It represents the first stage in the development of a "new language," one necessary for significant societal change...

...Women artists have finally begun to define what they want art to be, and in the process they have brought new freedom for everyone...

...Male artists increased their numbers by only 53 per cent...

...But this should not be impossible for a movement whose founding cry was "the personal is political...

...Figures compiled by New York arts activist Ellouise Schoettler in 1978 show that less than 2 per cent of all shows given for living artists by major museums were for women artists...

...just as they sometimes clash in everyday life...

...They are creating a female language reflecting the conviction of many women— and men—that war is obsolete and we must change our thinking accordingly...

...The whole notion of what art is about has expanded to include the other half of the human race...

...A woman's art museum is needed, according to executive director Anne Immelda Radice, because "you can't see this art in any other museum...

...One of the sad consequences of art history has been the separation between high art and ordinary, everyday creativity so that crafts are pointedly separated from high-price, high-status works of art...

...Forced to run their own art businesses and to become their own managers, curators, contractors, distributors, dealers, promoters, and critics, women artists have broadened their own sense of the possible...

...Gains made since 1970, moreover, are eroding...

...The definition of "art" has undeniably expanded in recent years...

...Rather than offer their wares only to a few like-minded individuals, a majority of women artists create for an audience of all who enjoy art...

...Durbin has written on women's issues for various publications and is the author of "Women and the Arts: A Recent Survey of Progress," the working paper for the Second National Conference on Women and the Arts...

...To be sure, the women-in-the-arts movement has its share of separatists who want to exclude men from their audience...

...Yet the question lingers: Things are different, all right, but are they better, for men as well as women...

...I feel strong in myself because of it...

...But I think it's kind of wonderful...

...Whether exemplified by a powerful goddess figure in a painting, or by a film or novel about an ordinary woman who finds the strength to do extraordinary things, the message is clear...

...Strong women have been one theme of feminist art: art with a political message, created by women...

...So were the percentages...

...And the clash between those who have been struggling to become, then to survive, who have survived, created a body of art, or restored one to view, and those who have mors recently arrived to claim the territory, not only with the money and resources denied to the pioneers, but with the potential power to exclude them altogether...

...And it occurred even though women artists earn one-third less than male artists— and 26 per cent less than the national average for all women's work...

...While many women artists and critics continue to debate the strategies, gains, and importance of this women-in-the-arts movement, all agree that the art world is different today from what it was only two decades ago...

...It has completed its second challenge-grant campaign backed by the National Endowment for the Arts, and its fundraising total now stands at $8 million...

...Navaretta went to her files and pulled out samples of the posters she had distributed more than ten years before...

...But even though more women artists have more access and exposure than before, they still have a hard time making a living...

...My particular piece has made me realize that I personally have a lot of power in communicating with individuals that I didn't realize before," she told The New York Times...

...The Guggenheim's recent retrospective exhibition of Helen Franken-thaler's fifty-six "Works on Paper: 1949 to 1984" is a tribute to a woman artist who held her own among her male contemporaries—Robert Motherwell, Willem deKooning, Jackson Pollack...

...On the local level, women—who have always been leaders in community arts development—are reworking the language of the male establishment and helping people develop, through art, a sense of their individual and ethnic histories...

...Perhaps it had never occurred to these women, until now, to wonder why artists have virtually ignored the moment in which women fulfill what society has traditionally extolled as their sacred biological function...

...Women involved in creating contemporary female imagery in works like "The Birth Project" feel good about themselves and their medium...

...According to U.S...

...A 1972 issue of Time magazine revealed that "in Manhattan, the leading art marketplace, the 100 principal modern art galleries represent about 1,000 artists...

...In 1980, women constituted 38 per cent of the artistic work force, up almost 12 percentage points from 1970...

...In the early 1970s, women artists found few opportunities for display and review of their work...

...Radice also says the museum's library will serve as an advanced study center for scholars of women's art, and its auditorium will be BIRTH TRINITY, © 1981 Judy Chicago a place for women's concerts and performances...

...I don't have to take a back seat to anybody...

...Women's experience is rooted in everyday life and during the past fifteen years there has been a growing respect for creative activity that is part of ordinary life," Janeway noted at the Second National Conference on Women and the Arts in Madison, Wisconsin, last summer...

...The influence of feminist artists is not limited to altering traditional institutions or establishing new ones...

...WOMEN ARTISTS ARE BEGINNING TO REALIZE THAT ART IS PROBABLY THE MOST POTENT INSTRUMENT OF PERSUASION THAT EXISTS IN THE WORLD' The exceptions, though few, have been heartening...

...BEFORE THE RECENT SURGE OF FEMINISM, FEW AMBITIOUS WOMEN ARTISTS ON THE NEW YORK ART SCENE WOULD HAVE BEEN CAUGHT DEAD MAKING A QUILT' Michelangelo's CREATION OF ADAM...

...Neither would a woman artist in her right mind have worked in needlework or china painting—as Chicago did in "The Dinner Party," her 1979 reinterpretation of the Last Supper—nor rendered such subjects as dressing tables, or male nudes reclining in the traditional passive female model mode, or what has come to be called "female imagery...

...so too are white women artists claiming excellence and white women art organizers claiming community...

...Federal funding for the arts has been slashed...

...Slowly they moved around to the back of the display panel to read the short biographies and look at the pictures of the women who had sewed the millions of tiny stitches into this work of art, hanging now in a public place in the center of their town...

...Judy Chicago, creator of "The Birth Project," which is now touring the country, is one of the women artists who have become visible during the last fifteen years...

...As women artists continue deploying strategies that shaped a movement and changed the direction of art in America, they will have to contend with these and other problems...

...It's—you know— the moment when the baby's head...

...Quilts were not seen as art because they also served utilitarian functions...

...Part of the reason for the new-found success of women's art is an attempt, by the artist, to speak to a broad constituency...

...The wording was much the same...

...The best way for women artists to gain success with these large audiences is through traditional channels and institutions...

...her younger companion...

...This new opportunity is one manifestation of fifteen years of intense female-sparked activity in the arts...

...They fell silent...

...Activists are confronting threats to the environment, up to and including nuclear war, with new methods...

...As the incredible array of women artists, the symbol makers, increase their collaboration with women's studies scholars and advocates for women's rights, they cannot help but have a significant impact on reshaping society...

...white middle-class women artists who see as women but do not yet understand questions of race and class...

...Over the past decade and a half, woman-powered caucuses, networks, theater groups, film collectives, music organizations, video and cable groups, presses and publishers, bookstores, art and sculpture exhibits, concerts of women's music and performance art in public places have drawn attention to feminist work...

...Not surprisingly, many women chose not to wait for institutional change but to create their own institutions...

...Before the recent surge of feminism, few ambitious women artists on the New York art scene would have been caught dead making a quilt," says Lucy Lippard, a well-known feminist art critic...

...Only five were by women...

...As with any political movement, urgent and troubling questions remain...

...Today, women and men can view "The Birth Project," depicting the moment of crowning when the baby's head appears at the entrance of the birth canal...

...The progress has been encouraging...

...The museum will house the Holladay Collection, an incomparable body of more than 200 works by women artists from the Sixteenth Century to the present...

...It's called The Crowning,' " observed Elizabeth Durbin and Doug Bradley are free-lance writers in Madison, Wisconsin...

...women of color artists who see as women but also out of a racial and ethnic heritage, both a blessing and curse...

...Of these 20 per cent are women...

...At the Museum of Modern Art, women provide 9 per cent of the collection...

...And that pattern has been repeated in nearly every field of artistic endeavor—the visual arts, performing arts, literature...

...It has not only encouraged more women artists...

...Speaking at last year's national conference in Madison, Florence Howe, president of the Feminist Press, summarized some of these debates: "Our different worlds have clashed here...

...But redefining the notion of art has permitted women artists to lead a grass-roots revival...

...In its forty-three-year history, the Museum of Modern Art has mounted 1,000 one-artist exhibitions...

...Needlework, for example, the medium employed in Judy Chicago's "Birth Project," was previously considered a woman's craft—not art—by the predominantly male art establishment...

...A few women have made it to the top, but opportunities for most have failed to develop...

...Women artists are beginning to realize, says Janeway, that "art is probably the most potent instrument of persuasion that exists in the world...

...Finished, they again confronted the image...

...A prominent figure in the art world, Chicago has generated much controversy over both "The Birth Project" and her earlier, equally provocative creation, "The Dinner Party...

...Elizabeth Janeway, the social critic who wrote Cross Sections: From a Decade of Change and Powers of the Weak, commented on this phenomenon...

...The movement has opened up all fields of artistic endeavor to women— the visual arts we explore here and also music, literature, theater, and dance...

...I can't believe it," said the gray-haired one...

...Conferences, workshops, and gatherings, many national in scope, have helped women spread the word and develop a sense of sisterhood...

...Studies show that between 1969 and 1980 at the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art, female representation was essentially unchanged...

...Census data, the number of women artists increased by 162 per cent between 1970 and 1980...

...Opportunities for women in New York museums have not increased significantly...

...Even so, some art critics resist describing the new female artistic activity as "revolutionary," and many women artists themselves refuse to be labeled "feminist artists," preferring to succeed or fail simply as "artists...

...They say the younger women coming along have had it a lot easier and do not see the need for continued political action...

...Cynthia Navaretta, editor of Women Artists News and the Guide to Women's Arts Organizations, tells the story of a group of New York artists called the Gorilla Girls...

...It shocks me," the older woman finally said...

...Women's journals, magazines, and newsletters have reported ACTIVISTS ARE CREATING A FEMALE LANGUAGE REFLECTING THE CONVICTION OF MANY WOMEN-AND MEN-THAT WAR HAS BECOME OBSOLETE women's art activities...

...says Kathryn Clar-enbach, who organized both of the national conferences on women and the arts...

...But access for women to traditional institutions has been spotty at best...

...Bradley has written for The Progressive on Vietnam veterans and on the civil war in Lebanon...

...As symbolic leaders of the women's movement, women artists have also helped merge it into a larger humanistic revolution, one that seeks to unite all races and both sexes in opposition to hierarchical decisionmaking and military, patriarchal solutions to the world's problems...

...This increase was two-and-a-half times greater than the 4.5 per cent increase in the proportion of women in all occupations during the same period...

...Midway through the decade, the connections and ramifications of the women's artistic movement are just beginning to be realized...

...Dolly Kaminski, a Pennsylvania grandmother, devoted three years to a twenty-by-eight-foot filet crochet wall hanging for Chicago's project...

...Inspired by feminist art, more women have entered the art world...

...Our audience is anybody who knows and likes good art...

...The Metropolitan Museum collection of contemporary art includes 10 per cent by women...

...The individual artist and the feminist art organizations are sometimes at odds...

...They recently asked her advice on some posters they were distributing to protest the shockingly low percentage of New York gallery space allocated to women artists...

...In global terms, they have made the condition of all people their concern...

...Her work and that of countless others, freeing women to create art out of their personal concerns, illustrates what the women-in-the-arts movement has done: It has shown women that their own skills, feelings, and lives can be transformed into art...

...And the works of Lois Mailou Jones, a black artist with fifty one-person shows to her credit, hang in the Corcoran, Hirshhorn, Brooklyn Museum, and Metropolitan...

...it has brought art to the people, expanded society's definition of art, and placed diverse and realistic images of women before the public...

...Administrators who took on token women in the 1970s may feel they have done their duty...

...As one woman sculptor put it, "We don't play to just the highbrows or the art critics...

...And many women, like Elsa Honig Fine, the longtime editor of Woman's Arts Journal, admit they are burned out...

...The Museum of Women in the Arts, for example, promises to be a success when it opens in Washington in 1987...