Topic: Feminist Critique of the Female Body in Postmodernism
Description:
The main idea of the paper:
The accepted norms of female body styles vary over time and across cultures; therefore, women with bodies ‘outside’ of these patriarchal norms face cultural and social rejections. In a way, they will ‘punish’ their bodies/selves by the disciplinary practices in order to produce ‘docile bodies’ to fit within the characteristics of modern institutions. Female artists, relying on Michel Foucault’s theories (discipline/ punishment and power/knowledge), reacted to such fallacies through questioning the idea of the ‘beautiful body’ in order to challenge the patriarchal norms and classical ideals. Great examples would be the British painter Jenny Saville and the American artist Barbara Kruger.
Relying on Foucault’s theories on discipline/punishment and knowledge/power, the gaze theory, and the beauty myth concept, show how these two feminist artists influenced the art field, and how their feminist philosophy can be applied by artists today.
After setting the theoretical framework of the paper, show how each feminist artist separately critiqued the constructed patriarchal norms of the female body (showing and analyzing some of their works), and then compare the two by pointing out the similarities and highlighting the differences between their feminist approaches. Finally, show how can their feminist methods influence other female artists.
– Chapter 7 in “Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory,” by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, 1997.
-“Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art After 1980,” by Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel, 2013.
-“Postmodernism: Movements in Modern Art,” by Eleanor Heartney, 2001.
-“Body Art: Performing the Subject,” by Amelia Jones, 1998.
-” Performing the Body: Performing the Text,” by Amelia Jones, 1999.