It is an indisputable fact that woman have always played some role as artists in the past. The significance or extent of that contribution at specific times was usually inhibited by male domination over social behavior, taste and value. So although individual women have contributed a great deal to the history of art, they have also usually suffered undeserving neglect of their accomplishments.
The feminist art movement began in the late 1960s and continued throughout the 70s. It is still continuing today as post- feminism or just Female Art.
To focus more attention to women in the arts, feminist artists began organizing women’s cooperative galleries. Feminist art historians such as Eleanor Tufts, in her groundbreaking book Our Hidden Heritage (1974) and Linda Nochlin in essays wrote about women artists.
Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro made some important works in the early 1970s. In 1977 a leader of the later feminists, Cindy Sherman began work on a series of black-and-white photographs of herself in various assumed roles. The images simulate stills from B-grade movies of the 1940s and 1950s.
In one of these photographs Sherman plays a perplexed young innocent woman apparently recently arrived in a big city, its buildings looming as a threateningly behind her. The image suggests a host of films in which similar character is overwhelmed by dangerous forces and is rescued by a hero. (No wonder when most film directors were men at that time). While Sherman’s motives are complex, many observers have suggested that in these works she indicts Hollywood’s stereotypical images of women and femininity by showing how one can “invent” oneself in a variety of roles.
