Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Section A Introduction
- Section B Continuum, 1952–1961
- Section C Abundance, 1961–1971
- Section D Alternatives, 1971–1988
- 1 Disorientation and dissent in the art world
- 2 Alloway and the politicization of art, 1968–1970
- 3 Changing values, 1971–1972
- 4 Artforum and the art world as a system
- 5 1973 and a new pluralism
- 6 The uses and limits of art criticism
- 7 Criticism and women's art, 1972–1974
- 8 Women's art and criticism, 1975
- 9 The realist ‘renewal’
- 10 Photo-Realism
- 11 The realist ‘revival’
- 12 Realist revisionism
- 13 The decline of the avant-garde
- 14 ‘Legitimate variables’
- 15 Earth art
- 16 Public art
- 17 In praise of plenty
- 18 Crises in the art world: criticism
- 19 Crises in the art world: feminism
- 20 Crises in the art world: curatorship
- 21 The co-ops and ‘alternative’ spaces
- 22 Turn of the decade decline
- 23 Mainstream…
- 24 … and ‘alternative’
- 25 The last years
- 26 The complex present
- Section E Summary and Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Platesection
8 - Women's art and criticism, 1975
from Section D - Alternatives, 1971–1988
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Section A Introduction
- Section B Continuum, 1952–1961
- Section C Abundance, 1961–1971
- Section D Alternatives, 1971–1988
- 1 Disorientation and dissent in the art world
- 2 Alloway and the politicization of art, 1968–1970
- 3 Changing values, 1971–1972
- 4 Artforum and the art world as a system
- 5 1973 and a new pluralism
- 6 The uses and limits of art criticism
- 7 Criticism and women's art, 1972–1974
- 8 Women's art and criticism, 1975
- 9 The realist ‘renewal’
- 10 Photo-Realism
- 11 The realist ‘revival’
- 12 Realist revisionism
- 13 The decline of the avant-garde
- 14 ‘Legitimate variables’
- 15 Earth art
- 16 Public art
- 17 In praise of plenty
- 18 Crises in the art world: criticism
- 19 Crises in the art world: feminism
- 20 Crises in the art world: curatorship
- 21 The co-ops and ‘alternative’ spaces
- 22 Turn of the decade decline
- 23 Mainstream…
- 24 … and ‘alternative’
- 25 The last years
- 26 The complex present
- Section E Summary and Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Platesection
Summary
Yet Alloway did not pay much attention to female artists’ iconography in his criticism of women's art. It was the case that much feminist work in the first four years of the decade dealt with the central void, and may, as Alloway thought, have limited iconographical potential beyond a primary analysis. It was only in the winter 1973–1974 edition of The Feminist Art Journal that the editor, Cindy Nemser, challenged the case for an intrinsic female imagery as “simplistic and reductive.” She dismissed Judy Chicago, the main proponent of the central void, as a “narrowminded theorist” and helped to open up the wider discussion of imagery that was beginning to happen amongst women artists. However, there were women artists working in the early part of the decade whose work Alloway knew—Patsy Norvell or Sylvia Sleigh, for example—and that had considerable iconographical potential. While Alloway may have had his reasons for not writing about Sleigh's work, he could have chosen work in large shows like New York Eleven and Women's Work: American Art 1974 that was interesting iconographically. Indeed, he made the point that In Her Own Image contributed to “a study of women's iconography from within the traditional roles, as they are questioned, stretched, or fractured,” but Alloway seemed more often to concentrate on a more simply descriptive aesthetic, emphasizing the visual characteristics of a work. When discussing Women's Work: American Art 1974, he describes “all-over repetitive” forms by four artists: Arlene Slavin, Joyce Kozloff, Howardina Pindell, and Perle Fine in the same way, stressing that “My point is not that all-over form is a feminine characteristic (it has been suggested as one), but that it is every bit as well used here as by male artists working in the same way. It is a didactic point worth making at this time in the still contested study of women's art.” Even if he rejected any idea of intrinsic gender characteristics, the important fact that the use of a particular type of form was conscious could have opened up a discussion of not only why form-type was chosen, but how it worked in terms of the artist's impetus to communicate something. This would inevitably have brought iconography into play.
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- Art and PluralismLawrence Alloway’s Cultural Criticism, pp. 334 - 337Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012