{"id":7808,"date":"2018-02-27T16:10:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T16:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=7808"},"modified":"2018-02-27T16:58:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T16:58:10","slug":"a-tale-of-two-art-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2018\/02\/27\/a-tale-of-two-art-journals\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale Of Two Art Journals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna Zarra Aldrich is majoring in English, political science and journalism at the University of Connecticut.\u00a0 She is a student writing intern studying historical feminist publications from the collections of Archives and Special Collections. The following guest post is one of a series to be published throughout the Spring 2018 semester.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second advent of the feminist movement that washed over American society in the 1960s and 1970s like a tidal wave emphasized a pervasive message of empowerment which manifested in a variety of periodicals during this period, including art journals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Women had largely been excluded from the world of fine art for centuries as geniuses like Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dali and Monet were celebrated and revered while their female contemporaries, such as Georgia O\u2019Keefe or Frida Kahlo, were few and far between as their talent went largely unencouraged and unrewarded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Feminist Art Journal\u201d was published quarterly from 1972 to 1977 out of Brooklyn, New York by Feminist Art Journal Inc. One of the early editions of the journal from 1973 addresses the idea that women have created art for the centuries during which they were strictly confined to the home. An article titled: \u201cQuilts: The Great American Art,\u201d discusses how quilts, tapestries and other home d\u00e9cor have acted as mediums of female artistic expression that have historically been disregarded by men as mere frivolous decorations. The article states that, \u201cWomen have always made art. But for most women, the arts highest valued by male society have been closed to them for just that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

An editorial from the same issue emphasizes the need of women to \u201crediscover their own history.\u201d One of the primary aims of \u201cThe Feminist Art Journal\u201d was to reclaim women\u2019s place in art history through articles such as the one on quilts and by discussing issues of female representation in classical art. An intriguing article on Marie De Medici from the Summer 1977 issue explores how the powerful Florentine heir-turned-French-monarch commissioned portraits of herself and her life accomplishments like those that were traditionally done for prominent males of the period. Medici also pointedly decorated her palace with statues of great women like Saint Bathilde and George Sand. The article emphasizes how Marie de Medici understood the power of art as a political statement, \"\"<\/a>underscoring another one of the journal\u2019s core messages: art is political.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, a short-lived lesbian feminist journal published from 1973 to 1975, the \u201cAmazon Quarterly: A Lesbian-Feminist Art Journal\u201d expressed a much different viewpoint from \u201cThe Feminist Art Journal\u201d. \u201cAmazon Quarterly\u201d was published from the other side of the country, in Oakland, California by Amazon Press.\u00a0<\/strong>It should be noted that both of these journals were published independently, sustained by revenue from subscriptions, single issue sales and advertisements. Both journals also had exclusively female editors.<\/p>\n

The \u201cAmazon Quarterly\u201d commended women\u2019s lack of participation in the male-dominated art world, in which they were routinely objectified in the works of male artists, rather than seeking to place women\u2019s accomplishments within this patriarchal frame work.<\/p>\n

Both \u201cThe Feminist Art Journal\u201d and \u201cAmazon Quarterly\u201d promoted and provided a platform for female artists to share their literature, poetry, drawings, photography. However, \u201cAmazon Quarterly\u201d made promoting the art of women, specifically lesbians, its primary artistic goal, rather than engaging in discussions of history.<\/p>\n

The division in purpose and ideology of these two journals which served, broadly, the same role, reflected a deeper division in the feminist movement between lesbians and straight women. Some lesbians believed women could not fully participate in the true revolution of the feminist movement so long as they were still sexually involved with their male oppressors, a radical idea that is discussed in articles published in the journal.<\/p>\n

In an article, \u201cDistinctions: The Circle Game\u201d from the February 1973 issue of
\n\u201cAmazon Quarterly\u201d written by one of the editors, Laurel Galana, whose byline is simply a familiar: Laurel, explores these divisions within the movement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Laurel breaks down the group of women who are feminists into increasingly small subcultures from lesbians to \u201cnew lesbians\u201d to dykes. The \u201cnew lesbians\u201d Laurel describes had several verboten relations including those with men and straight women, whom they viewed as \u201cmen\u2019s women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laurel herself abides by these taboos, she explains, \u201cMy energy, my time, my sisterly love was indirectly useful to the male for keeping his woman content. And secondly, I decided not to relate to straight women because they already had made a choice which did not include me \u2013 that is all of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The piece goes on to criticize lesbians who distinguish themselves based on class, believing that such internal divisions will only cause the movement to fracture and be less effective. She seems to miss the irony of the fact that she believes lesbians should not associate with straight feminists and form a united front of all feminist women.<\/p>\n

Much of the art and especially the literature published in the journal reflected the fact that \u201cAmazon Quarterly\u201d branded itself as a periodical that intended to cater specifically to lesbian women. Many of the pieces published in the journal deal with tales and the feelings associated with homosexual awakenings and attraction. The publication had an entire issue dedicated to the topic of sexuality as their swan song before shutting down in 1977.<\/p>\n

While the journal ceased publication in 1977, the editors went on to run Bluestocking Books, a publishing house which published a few novels including \u201cThe Violent Sex\u201d by Laurel Holliday. Holliday\u2019s book confronted the evolution of masculine sexuality and behavior that has led to the sexual and social oppression of women.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Despite their differences, both these journals considered art in an expansive sense, including all forms of visual and literary art, and stressed the importance of the inclusion of the female perspective in them.<\/p>\n

While these two journals had different audiences and somewhat different goals, they both served to underscore the important idea that art is political, and that women had to understand how they could use any and all forms of art to express their ideas and achieve their objectives.<\/p>\n

The art of many female artists of the period, during which feminist art truly began to flourish and find its foothold, was clearly in line with this philosophy. Some notable works include Judy Chicago\u2019s \u201cThe Dinner Party,\u201d which portrays a dinner party of 39 notable historical women, and Hannah Wilke\u2019s avant garde \u201cStarification Object Series,\u201d a series of photographs for which she covered her body with wads of gum folded to resemble female genitalia.<\/p>\n

These two journals and the art they supported show how women utilized the arts to promote the feminist agenda as they worked toward achieving social and political equality despite divisions within the movement.<\/p>\n

In a 1977 interview published in \u201cChrysalis\u201d magazine, Chicago commented on the value of art to the feminist movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is particularly important for women and can catapult women into a different realm of consciousness by symbolizing and objectifying our experience. That expression, that impulse, has such potential power, and it is that power that society tries to contain by trivializing, by repressing, by suppressing the art impulse,\u201d Chicago said. \u201cAs long as women participate in that process, we will never be able to realize our full creative potential. We must bust out of that, just absolutely bust out of that and reclaim art as the basic outpouring of the human spirit and pour out our songs and all our feelings and all our beliefs and all our visions in a way that everyone can hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Anna Zarra Aldrich<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna Zarra Aldrich is majoring in English, political science and journalism at the University of Connecticut.\u00a0 She is a student writing intern studying historical feminist publications from the collections of Archives and Special Collections. The following guest post is one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[351,253,3,9],"tags":[12,429,329,155],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NKyO-21W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7808"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7834,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7808\/revisions\/7834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}